Her Majesty the Queen: 80th Birthday

Baroness Amos: rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty The Queen as follows:
	"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer Your Majesty the warmest congratulations of this House on the occasion of Your Majesty's forthcoming eightieth Birthday; to assure Your Majesty of our deep affection and highest regard; and to join our prayers with those of the Nation and Commonwealth for the long continuance of Your Majesty's health and happiness".

Baroness Amos: My Lords, it is a privilege to move this Motion to mark the occasion of Her Majesty's eightieth birthday tomorrow. The Queen's sense of duty and service has been the defining feature not only of her reign but of her life. Her sense of duty and courage were to be called on in 1952 when on a trip to Kenya she learnt that her father had died. At her coronation, which was watched by millions around the world, she made a solemn vow:
	"Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust".
	This sentiment has been evident in the sincerity, diligence, grace and courtesy which have marked the conduct of her public duty. In a period of rapid social and technological change, she has provided the nation with a sense of constancy, security, stability and unity. That is a remarkable achievement in a world that is witnessing the impact of globalisation, the challenges of conflict and the world's growing interdependence.
	Respect for the Queen goes beyond these shores. As head of the Commonwealth, the Queen presides over a unique organisation of countries—small and large, developed and developing and embracing more than a quarter of the world's population. The Queen has undertaken more than 256 official visits overseas to 129 countries. That is travel on a scale unparalleled by previous monarchs. Only a few weeks ago she was in Melbourne, opening the Commonwealth Games. While, of course, Commonwealth countries have been her priority destination, she has also travelled much further afield, and in 1986 she was the first monarch ever to visit China. Her dedication has been rewarded by the affection in which she is held everywhere she goes.
	At home, she is the patron of more than 620 charities and organisations and attends hundreds of public engagements every year. She has an interest in every area of our national life and has sought to bring the monarchy closer to the people. The Queen began her reign with a coronation that was broadcast to 20 million people. In 1969, she invited the public into her home with the first television film about the life of the Royal Family. Shortly after, the Queen introduced the royal walkabout and, never slow to take advantage of new ideas, in 1997 the Queen launched Buckingham Palace's first official website.
	As President of the Privy Council, I have the privilege of presiding over regular Privy Council meetings with Her Majesty. She is unfailingly gracious and patient when, as has happened on more than one occasion, I do not quite get it right. We look forward to the many events celebrating the Queen's 80th birthday that will take place between now and June. I know that all of your Lordships will wish to join me in thanking the Queen for her lifetime of service and wishing her joy, happiness, and a very happy birthday on 21 April. I beg to move.
	Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty The Queen as follows:
	"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer Your Majesty the warmest congratulations of this House on the occasion of Your Majesty's forthcoming eightieth Birthday; to assure Your Majesty of our deep affection and highest regard; and to join our prayers with those of the Nation and Commonwealth for the long continuance of Your Majesty's health and happiness".—(Baroness Amos.)

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, which he very much regrets, it is my privilege to support from these Benches the Motion of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, which she moved so eloquently.
	We all join warmly in wishing Her Majesty the happiest of birthdays, which is the 55th of her remarkable reign. Her Majesty, as a young woman, dedicated her whole life to the service of this country and to what has become, as the noble Baroness has reminded us, under her headship, the great Commonwealth of nations, a giant force for good in the world, spanning continents and faiths, developed and developing countries. It is a true 21st-century configuration and is often undervalued by those with less far-sighted vision than Her Majesty. Indeed, I cannot think that without Her Majesty the Commonwealth would have existed in the shape and strength and with the growing global relevance that it has today.
	Wherever one travels, wherever one receives friends and visitors from around the globe, one finds unbounded respect and affection for a woman whose face must be one of the best known in the world. We are deeply proud and honoured to have such a person as our Queen and head of state. We are proud that she is so gentle and concerned, proud that she is so admired throughout the world, proud that she combines so gracefully the wisdom of age with the beauty that comes with maturity. Her Majesty is the best possible living proof of the huge advantage of the enduring institution of monarchy over transient political moods and fashions.
	Long ago she asked us to sustain her service with our prayers. Let us renew that support and pray that this great and greatly loved Queen may continue in the service of her people—all her peoples—for many years to come.

Lord McNally: My Lords, 59 years ago tomorrow in Cape Town, South Africa, the then 21 year-old Princess Elizabeth said:
	"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service".
	Anyone who has seen the newsreel of that occasion cannot but be moved by the sincerity of that long-ago promise.
	Fortunately, the life has been a long one, and we today have the happiness of congratulating Her Majesty on her 80th birthday. We can also recall that no vow has ever been more dutifully honoured than the vow that she made 59 years ago. We on these Benches wish health to Her Majesty and gladly associate ourselves with this Motion.

Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to support the Motion and have the opportunity to congratulate Her Majesty the Queen on her 80th birthday on behalf of the Cross-Bench Peers; to thank her warmly for her service to our nation over very many years; and to wish her every continuing happiness. Some people may think that in the House of Lords we are rather expert and indeed experienced in 80th birthdays, but this is a very special birthday because the whole nation celebrates with Her Majesty this milestone in her life as our sovereign.
	For all the citizens of our country, the presence of Her Majesty at the centre of our national life throughout her long reign has been a source of confidence and strength, and we, the Cross-Bench Peers, certainly feel this very strongly. I feel it myself, representing a group of very distinguished men and women in many fields of national life in which Her Majesty has herself played a role as a patron or in many other ways.
	In my village in Somerset, we are having a tea party for Her Majesty's 80th birthday—an excellent idea, tea parties in every village. Everyone there thinks that Her Majesty is wonderful. In this House we think exactly the same. We give her our loyalty, appreciation and very best wishes on her 80th birthday.

The Lord Bishop of Oxford: My Lords, from these Benches, I am also glad to support the Motion, to pay tribute to Her Majesty and to wish her a happy birthday, while reaffirming wholeheartedly what has been said from all sides of the House.
	In a period of truly unprecedented change, Her Majesty has been an example of continuity and, more than that, of constancy and stability. Those values have been shown in her to have real solidity and substance, for behind them lies the example of her late father, His Majesty King George VI. Like him, she has carried out her responsibilities and duties in a way that has been utterly straightforward and totally exemplary. In a world dominated by the transient and the fashionable, where so-called celebrities come and go overnight, she has shown us what is of lasting and abiding value.
	Finally, it is perhaps appropriate for us on these Benches to pay particular tribute to the special relationship that Her Majesty has with the Church of England, not in any narrow or partisan way, but as a symbol for the spiritual dimension of the life of the nation as a whole and of all people in it—we are all valuable, and we are responsible to and for one another. We are all, ultimately, accountable. We too wish her a happy birthday, and may she long reign over us.
	On Question, Motion agreed to nemine dissentiente; and it was ordered that the Address be presented to Her Majesty by the Lord Chamberlain.

Olympic Games 2012: Construction Industry

Lord Harrison: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What assessment they have made of skill shortages in the construction industry, especially in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, ConstructionSkills, the sector skills council covering the construction industry, has undertaken extensive research and consultation to identify the industry's skills needs. In 2005 it published a sector skills agreement responding to these challenges, which include skills gaps in traditional crafts, project management and leadership skills.
	In preparation for the Olympics, ConstructionSkills has set up a special team, Constructing London 2012, to identify the skills needed to deliver the Games. Work is now being taken forward.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, I recognise the importance of the 2012 Olympics and other major construction projects in London, but will my noble friend ensure that the rest of the country is properly served by those who are properly skilled in construction? Does he view with alarm, as I do, the fact that the construction industry believes that it will need 88,000 new entrants a year and some 250,000 with NVQ level 2, when the national skills agency for construction proposes only 20,000 new people every year, rising by 2010 to 70,000? There is still a skills shortage.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right about the need to ensure a proper balance across the country in construction skills. I am informed, however—to put the immense challenge of 2012 in perspective—that the total construction demands of 2012 projects will constitute no more than 5 per cent of construction output in London and the south-east in any one year over the period to 2012. We need to keep that in perspective.
	My noble friend is absolutely right about the huge challenge of recruiting 88,000 new entrants a year. It is precisely for that reason that we are pioneering a range of new initiatives, including the on-site assessment and training programme, which assesses workers for NVQs in the workplace; why we have significantly boosted the modern apprenticeship scheme; why we are introducing the new construction specialised diploma; and why we are developing the new national skills academy for construction alongside the existing and very successful National Construction College. I agree with my noble friend that there is a great deal to do, but I believe that improvements are under way.

Lord Addington: My Lords, what steps are the Government taking to make sure that all the firms involved in the construction work for 2012 take on their fair share of work placements and trainees and help with the apprenticeships and that any firms to which they subcontract fulfil their role in that regard? There is no point in complaining about the skills shortage if you are not doing your bit to back it up.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important issue. There is a new agreement with the major contractors group and the major home-building group to provide work practice for college students and to ensure that companies within their chains do so, to address the current lack of on-site work experience opportunities, which we recognise is an important issue, and of construction skills. The sector skills council is looking at what further can be done.

Lord Higgins: My Lords, in preparing for the Olympics, are the Government studying what lessons may be learnt from the experience and the problems of building Wembley stadium?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am sure that very close attention is being paid to the comparison.

Lord Rosser: My Lords, did the assessment of skills shortages in the construction industry also consider whether there were skills shortages in the senior management ranks of the industry?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the 88,000 a year figure of demand for new entrants, to which my noble friend referred earlier, includes 10,500 in managerial posts and 8,000 in technical and professional roles. The sector skills agreement published last year has a comprehensive range of measures to ensure that those skills needs also are met.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, what housing is to be built as part of this development? I understand that it is not just a question of stadia and that there will be housing. Will the Minister take a message back to the Government to encourage whoever is constructing the housing to do so in a commonhold form, for which the Government have expressed support although nothing has happened?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I fear that the precise tenure of the building is beyond my brief, so I cannot answer that point. However, the noble Baroness is right: there will be a significant housing element. That is being taken full account of in the assessments.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, in meeting the challenge of skills shortages for 2012, will the Minister look at the work of National Grid Transco in rehabilitating young offenders and putting them into work with electricity, gas and water utilities? Could that be expanded?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I will take careful note of what the noble Earl has said. If he will send me the details of the programme to which he referred, I shall ensure that my department responds to him.

Baroness Billingham: My Lords, there are genuine concerns about deliverability. Is the Minister aware that certain major construction companies have already expressed doubts about whether they will be able to fulfil their obligations? In light of that, is the Minister encouraging other member states to provide people with a host of skills who are available throughout the rest of Europe? What are the Government doing to ensure that that is well publicised and that those people will be accommodated and made welcome when necessary?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the Constructing London 2012 team is looking at precisely the issues that she raises. They are important issues for ensuring that we have an adequate supply of skilled employees to do the work for 2012. However, noble Lords who have seen the very large flow of skilled workers coming to this country from the new member states will have seen evidence that already the skills demands are being met by the European Union in its wider sense.

Lord Jopling: My Lords, does the Minister understand that the warnings that have come from all parts of the House this morning add up to the situation that there is almost bound to be a large overrun on the budget? I think that everybody involved with the 2012 Olympics has always felt that. Will the Government give an undertaking that, as that overrun grows and grows, this House and Parliament in general will be regularly informed of the size of the deficit?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I can give the noble Lord an undertaking that we will keep the House informed, but I hope that the eventuality that he paints will not be realised.

Lord Elton: My Lords, I realise that commonhold is outside the Minister's brief but, as he answers for the Government as a whole, will he send a letter to my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, as she is entitled to expect?

Lord Adonis: Absolutely, my Lords; I will do that.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, does the Minister agree that this is a golden opportunity to enhance the skills base of this country? I have no wish to denigrate the valiant work of Polish plumbers or—in a reversal of "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet"—German builders, but it seems far more important to encourage young people in this country to recognise how great the construction industry is and what opportunities there are. I would welcome some comment from the Minister on that, as well as confirmation that he is working with the trade unions, through the TUC, to achieve these objectives.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I understand that my noble friend is also celebrating his birthday today, so the House should congratulate him, alongside the other congratulations that have been offered.
	My noble friend is absolutely right: we need to boost significantly the standing of the construction industry among those coming through the schools system and new employees. That is precisely why we are introducing the construction specialised diploma in 2008. The Construction Industry Training Board held a launch event last month for the diploma, attended by 90 employers, who welcomed it enthusiastically. The trade unions also have a big part to play. The on-site assessment and training programmes, which assess workers' NVQs, are projected to ensure that 250,000 adults qualify to level 2 in construction industry trades. There is a commitment to see that it comes about from the industry as a whole, combined with the Government and the Learning and Skills Council. We are taking significant steps in this direction.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, we are well into the 10th minute; we have had 10 supplementary questions. We must move on.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords—

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Rooker: My Lords, we must move on.

Education: Adult Learning

Lord Bilston: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	How many adult learning places they expect to be available in further education colleges in 2007–08 compared to 2005–06.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, in 2007–08 we expect to spend £2.9 billion on adult education. Colleges will provide more free courses to meet national skills priorities, including adult literacy and numeracy courses, level 2 courses and a new free entitlement to a level 3 qualification for young adults. We will provide around 3.5 million funded adult places, a reduction of about 6 per cent compared to 2005–06 but with increased activity at full cost. Overall numbers are expected to remain constant.

Lord Bilston: My Lords, the Association of Colleges estimates that 200,000 places will have been lost by 2008. In addition, due to the Government's requirement that colleges further prioritise courses for 16 to 19 year-olds and courses for adults without basic skills—I welcome that—500,000 places will be lost by 2007–08. My noble friend will also be aware that fees continue to rise, possibly by as much as 60 per cent in the three years from 2004–05 to 2007–08. I wonder, therefore, if the Minister and the Government would take into account the public's ability to pay the increased fees, recognising the wide disparity in incomes in various parts of the UK. Will the Government consider a variation on the fee assumption for each region based on average wage levels?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right: some difficult decisions have had to be made within an overall budget that remains constant, and an FE budget that has risen by 48 per cent in real terms since 1997. We have decided to prioritise three key areas that we think essential for our society and economy: adult basic skills and first level 2 qualifications, which are essential for employability, and we now want to include first level 3 qualifications for those under 25. That results in an increase in fees for those on adult courses not subject to those discounts. However, the average increase for funded courses for the individual or their employer will be from 32.5 to 37.5 per cent, which will increase the average fee per hour from £1.42 to £1.94. While recognising that some difficult decisions must be taken—there is a regional dimension—we are confident that it will be possible to sustain numbers and that this will not lead to a decline in adult education, as some fear.

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, does the Minister agree that offering fewer funded places on adult courses is contradictory to getting more people into higher education and lifelong learning? Is it not a case of rhetoric being contradicted by government cuts?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, they are not government cuts, as I have emphasised; we are prioritising key skills needs. I would have thought that any government wanting to meet those needs would think it right to prioritise adult basic skills, first level 2 qualifications, which is the equivalent of GCSE, and now first level 3 qualifications for those under 25. Those last two groups in particular, if they succeed in college—particularly those going on to level 3—will then be eligible to go into higher education. I do not believe that that will lead to a reduction in the numbers going forward to higher education.

The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I welcome, as we all do, the increased availability of skills and qualifications for people in that age group, but does the Minister accept that there has been increasing recognition that people in that age group need something more than a sense of being involved in a qualifications factory? They need attention to their spiritual and personal needs, in a way that has been much more traditionally part of the higher education sector than of the further education sector. That is increasingly being recognised. Does he welcome that, and will he give continued encouragement to the development in that sector of proper attention to the whole-person needs of those involved in it?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I entirely welcome the remarks made by the right reverend Prelate. Most further education colleges take seriously the wider role that they play in developing the whole person as part of their education, including making proper provision for the spiritual element. There is much excellent practice in further education colleges in this area, and I hope that it can be spread nationwide.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, in view of the scandalously—I use the Government's own word—low level of participation in training and education at 16 and the high proportion of the adult workforce that lack the skills for sustainable employment, do the Government agree that, to back the financial incentives given to people to participate, they need to review their long-term targets and provision for places in higher education, which would lead us to no more than a mediocre place in the international league table?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, it is precisely to meet the concerns raised by the noble Lord that we have undertaken the prioritisation in the further education sector. It includes some new and ambitious programmes, including for the first time a proper nationwide adult basic skills programme and the new Train to Gain programme—an employment-based programme for adult learners building on the success of the employer training pilots, which will receive £457 million in funding in 2007–08. That scheme did not even exist five years ago. We have not been increasing higher education numbers rapidly. We have a target to move towards 50 per cent, but numbers are not increasing rapidly year on year at the moment because of the priority that we believe we need to give to intermediate skills and to those without skills at all.

Lord Addington: My Lords, what has happened about sports coaching qualifications, which come under the heading of adult learning? How, without qualifying people to become coaches, can we address the targets on obesity? If the Department for Education and Skills has not consulted the Department of Health on this, will it do so quickly?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I will write to the noble Lord about that specific point; I am not aware of the details. There is huge expansion taking place in sport in schools, with a large number of additional teachers and other professionals being trained for those roles.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, we are into the 17th minute, and we are getting behind. We must make progress.

House of Lords: Appointments Commission

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What are the reporting and accountability arrangements for the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

Baroness Amos: My Lords, the commission is independent of government. As a non-departmental public body, it is sponsored by and reports to a Minister, in this case my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, will my noble friend the Leader of the House explain why we give sweeping powers to bodies that in practice are unaccountable, such as the Appointments Commission and the Committee on Standards in Public Life, many of whose members know little or nothing about the workings of Parliament? Will the Government consider instead the possibility of setting up Joint Committees of both Houses that are accountable to Parliament and restoring some degree of parliamentary sovereignty?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, the Lords Appointments Commission is accountable through my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to Parliament. The committee produces an annual report, which is available for perusal by Members of both Houses of Parliament. My noble friend raised the wider question of the best way of utilising the expertise and experience in both Houses of Parliament and suggested doing so through Joint Committees. I will look at the idea with my government colleagues because my noble friend's point is, in the wider context, a very fine one.

Lord McNally: My Lords, why is it that government loyalists such as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, want to go after the whistle-blower rather than the problem when the Government get their fingers jammed in the till? Should not his Question really have been: how does the House put on record its thanks to the committee for its integrity and courage in exposing some of the sleazier aspects of our public life?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I am slightly surprised by the tone of the noble Lord's question. I did not take that to be the meaning of my noble friend's Question. I thought that he was asking an entirely legitimate Question about the role of both Houses of Parliament.
	I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in his description of the role of this Government. He may recall that this Prime Minister has overseen a reduction in his powers of patronage through the appointment of the Lords Appointments Commission, which is now responsible for recommending appointments on a non-party political basis, for vetting for propriety and for scrutinising any names which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister adds to the half-yearly honours list. The Prime Minister should be thanked for that rather than judged on it, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, tried to do.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I respect and understand the Minister's unwillingness to hear explicit criticisms of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but will she completely dissociate herself from the implication that it is not fit for the job because not all its members sit in these two Houses?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I in no way read in the Question on the Order Paper an implicit or explicit criticism of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I read it as referring to reporting and accountability arrangements to Parliament. I quite rightly set out the accountability arrangements of the commission as a non-departmental public body. It is accountable to Parliament, which is very important. My noble friend raised the separate issue of making use of the experience and expertise in both Houses. I am happy to put on record the Government's view that the Lords Appointments Commission has done its job.

Lord Mawhinney: My Lords, your Lordships' House always attaches importance to any government initiative to increase transparency in the public life of the nation. When will the accountability arrangements for the commission be enhanced by greater transparency?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot say that. I am not aware of there being any moves to look in further detail at the accountability arrangements for the Lords Appointments Commission. Perhaps the noble Lord will write to me on transparency; I am not certain what he means by that. The Lords Appointments Commission is independent of government. It has an independent chairman. Its members are open to being written to. It has a website and information is available. If the noble Lord would like to say more on what he is talking about, I undertake to pass his comments on to the commission.

Incapacity Benefit: Medical Examinations

Lord Kimball: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What percentage of those who receive incapacity benefit have had a full face-to-face medical examination in the last full year for which figures are available.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, as at August 2005, there were 2.77 million people claiming incapacity benefit. During 2005, 477,000 face-to-face personal capability assessment examinations were undertaken. This represents some 17 per cent of the caseload.

Lord Kimball: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. It proves that the Department for Work and Pensions plus the Minister for Welfare Reform have not done a great deal over a period in which the Prime Minister himself said that there were 1 million people claiming incapacity benefit who wanted to work. The situation will not be made any easier for the Government with a backdrop of a slowing economy, rising unemployment and the unprecedented funding crisis in the National Health Service. All the same, I wish that the Government could do more.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I really cannot accept the noble Lord's criticism. It was under his government that the huge increases in incapacity benefit took place. We have seen a very encouraging reduction in the numbers on incapacity benefit this year. As for the economy, I would point out to noble Lords that just under 75 per cent of the working population are now in work; historically, that is very high indeed. The economy is in a sound state, and we are determined, as part of our welfare proposals, to reduce the number of people on incapacity benefit. We believe that, if they are given the right support and encouragement, then, as the Pathways to Work pilots experience has shown, we can get many of them back into work.

Lord Renton: My Lords, surely everyone who suffers from incapacity is entitled to the benefit that the state allows. Can the Minister give us an undertaking that, in every case, there is a full inquiry into the incapacity benefit that should be paid?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Yes, my Lords, I can. Those who are in the exempt category can be awarded incapacity benefit through an examination of the paperwork by the decision maker. Some claimants have to be referred to the medical service; for some that will be a paperwork process, whereas others will be called in for a medical examination. So every claimant is duly considered. Those who are entitled to incapacity benefit will receive it. We are saying in the welfare reform proposals that there are many people on incapacity benefit who would benefit and would wish to be in work if they were given all due support. That is what we intend to do.

Lord Addington: My Lords, can the Minister give us some assurance about how the in-depth initial examination will be expanded under this system? There is undoubtedly a case that these are not happening fast enough and lead to too many appeals. That would remove many of the problems in the system. It simply takes too long, and there is initial misdiagnosis.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord. As the numbers show, many appeals—about half—are allowed because new information has come to light. Our proposals on the welfare reform agenda are intended to ensure that as much information as possible is up front right at the start, so that we can get the right decision made the first time and reduce the need for people to go to appeal.

Wireless Telegraphy Bill [HL]

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate enactments about wireless telegraphy. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
	On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Violent Crime Reduction Bill

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Violent Crime Reduction Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order: Clauses 1 to 44 Schedule 1 Clause 45 Schedule 2 Clauses 46 and 47 Schedule 3 Clauses 48 to 55 Schedule 4 Clause 56.—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Fox Hunting: Alternatives

Lord Harrison: rose to call attention to the development of alternatives to fox hunting in the light of the Hunting Act 2004; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, today's debate on the alternatives to fox hunting is timely in the wake of the general 2004 legislation outlawing the hunting of mammals with dogs and timely as an opportunity for Parliament to review the legislation and assess its effects on the countryside. The main burden of the debate that I wish to develop today is to advance the legitimate alternatives to fox hunting which I regard to be the true middle way, a middle way that I define as the elimination of the mindless, cruel and demeaning pursuit and killing of a mammal for the purposes of fun while at the same time retaining the pomp, pride and panoply of a tradition in rural Britain that many still wish to celebrate in the form of organised hunts—hunts which bind and bound these close communities.
	What, then, are the advantages of turning to drag hunting, line hunting and hunting with bloodhounds? Are the disadvantages of these alternatives really as bad as some try to make out? Indeed are such so-called disadvantages capable of being overcome or modified in much the same way as the shooting of pigeons for sport 100 years ago was transmuted into the flourishing sport of clay pigeon shooting today—a non-cruel field sport?
	First, drag hunting is a cheaper sport to follow than fox hunting. This is confirmed by an article in the January 2005 edition of the Horse and Hound entitled "All about drag hunting" where the annual subscription for fox hunting is estimated to be £1,000 per person per year, in contrast to an average levy of £360 per annum to join a drag hunt. Coupled with other incidental expenses and on-costs not included here, such as the purchase of appropriate dress, this is a significant fact in view of the opportunities offered to increase recruitment and, just as importantly, to broaden the social mix of those who participate in hunting. Having an entry price of one-third of fox hunting offers enormous opportunities to build and sustain drag hunts in rural Britain and may also help to ward off the frequent criticism that hunts are class-based, closed and claustrophobic.
	Secondly, we were told before the ban that certain dire consequences would ensue. One was that the hunt would no longer provide a fallen stock service to farmers. This had simply not been true before the ban of the north-east Cheshire drag hunt which has been providing such a service since 1958. Nor is it true now, after the ban. Alan Hayes, hunt master for the Monmouthshire Hunt says that it has been operating a successful drag hunt by creating a scent for hounds to follow in the form of a sock soaked in pungent odour. But in addition to this trail hunting the Monmouthshire still,
	"provides a fallen stock collection service for farmers as well as a fox control service by using two dogs to flush a fox to guns".
	Indeed I wonder whether your Lordships know of any such fallen stock services which have been withdrawn in the wake of the ban. The same is true of point-to-points. I have seen no evidence that these are disappearing. Indeed, before this debate started I was approached by the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, who tells me that he attended the north Shropshire point-to-point and it is flourishing.
	A third fear was the withdrawal of permission by farmers for the hunt to traverse their property. Has anyone evidence that this is happening because of the ban? It certainly does not square with any common understanding of how things work in life and in the countryside. Why would groups such as hunters and farmers who share common interests want to take revenge on each other where there is every reason for them to collaborate for their mutual benefit? Incidentally, the Burns report indicated that many farmers would happily accept payment from hunts for access to their property if the ban were to be introduced. That surely fits in with the modern concept of farmers being stewards of the land for the benefit of others as well as generating income for themselves. All those fears touted by the shrill Countryside Alliance have been unrealised. People can adopt and change, provided they have the leadership to encourage and so prompt them.
	It is said that drag hunting is conducted at a faster rate than fox hunting, often involving more difficult jumps and requiring skills that would exclude certain groups including, say, children. The drag is thought to be too predictable and lacking the mystery with which fox hunting is magically invested; that it is run more infrequently throughout the year and during the week; that it covers a wider territory than is natural to the fox hunt; that it requires different personal skills, attitudes and aptitudes and so attracts a different audience and following from fox hunting.
	I believe that all those objections are either superficial or capable of useful modification. The crucial difference is that in fox hunting the fox dictates the course of events—no fox, no pursuit, no kill and no hunt and everyone is then able to enjoy the mystery and allure of a fruitless day spent in the countryside to their heart's content. In the case of the drag hunt, or the line hunt, a man dictates the course of events. That crucial difference permits an adaptability and a flexibility that can be shaped to satisfy a much wider range of interests and tastes than is currently the case with fox hunting. The pace and duration of the hunt can be fast and furious, with enthusiasts having but a few hours to pursue their favourite hobby, or it can be slow and measured to suit those who savour hunting like a good wine. Yes, those longueurs of afternoons when the fox's trail has been lost can be artificially recreated in drag hunting, if needed, to satisfy those of a slower turn of mind and limb.
	And because the pace and duration can be organised by man—by the masters of the hunt—so too can the difficulty of the course and the number and precipitousness of the jumps, thus providing sport for all grades of riders, old, young, expert and novice. That, in turn, will help the development of the sport and to recruit newcomers. The course can be chosen or adapted for younger or more experienced hounds and, of course, for different types of hounds, including bloodhounds. Let us remind ourselves that hounds are adaptable and can be retrained, as they always have been. Rides can be adapted for the different needs, skills and experiences of the horses ridden by the hunters. In that way, hunting becomes a more inclusive sport, more democratic, broadening its narrowing base—doubtless that is something that would have pleased Karl Marx's friend Friedrich Engels, who used to ride in my neighbouring Cheshire Hunt.
	Finally, hunts can be adapted to suit the needs of those who follow on foot. Their needs are normally ignored as they are expected simply to tag along during a normal fox hunt. But no sport should ignore its spectators, its fan base. After all, the origins of drag hunting were not necessarily to cater for those wishing to avoid the mindless chase and slaughter of an innocent mammal; the origin was promoted by market innovation, offering a package that catered for a separate set of needs from those provided by the traditional fox hunt.
	On the so-called mystery attached to fox hunting—its vaunted unpredictability—I make these points. First, those devising the drag hunt can introduce sudden and unexpected changes in the course of the run. Secondly, because drag hunts typically range over a wider area of the 60 per cent of land in Britain that is currently hunted than do individual fox hunts, drag hunt masters can lay more interesting and varied trails than is the case with fox hunting and can cover terrain that is not normally covered by the fox or the foxhound. Thirdly, do hunters decry other activities, such as point-to-point, because they are not unpredictable? Of course, they do not. Indeed, not everyone welcomes mystery and unpredictability. Some people prefer the predictable and the regular. When it comes to running over railway lines and main roads, the drag hunt can be designed to avoid such unpredictability and that is a good job too in view of the compensation and the saving of lives of people, hounds and horses. Hunt havoc, which is still an unacceptable reality in rural Britain today, can be minimised, along with the abhorrent invasion of rural people's gardens, the disruption of their privacy and sometimes the disgraceful killing of domestic pets. That is an unpredictable mystery we can all do without. Another advantage of the drag hunt—the man-made unpredictability of the route—can lead to a predictable finish, either back at the start or at a rendezvous point, pleasing not only those participating, but also followers and those associated with the hunt.
	Drag hunting and its related alternatives widen the scope of possibilities that the modern hunter might want to embrace. Such new thinking is happening now, but a voice from an unexpected quarter is the philosopher AC Grayling, who suggests that drag hunting and blood hounding could be conducted competitively with, he suggests, the Quorn, the North Cotswold and the Wynnstay hunts competing to see which can most quickly find the scent of the drag. Fresh revenues might be brought into the sport by televising drag hunting competitions. It could even become an Olympic sport—after all, John Whetton, the former Olympic runner, now runs regularly for a drag hunt. Not only would that generate money, create fun, introduce an element of showcasing equestrian, equine and canine skills, but it would also serve hunting's main and legitimate purpose of bringing together like-minded people in fellowship. What is required is not to spend time ignominiously in a bolt-hole waiting for the return of full-blooded fox hunting but for the hunting community to recognise what holds it together—each other—and then to think and act positively within the wider prospering rural communities that exist today. Indeed, we find not only increasing numbers of drag hunts, but increasing participation in the hunts themselves.
	A general election has intervened and I hope people recognise that no animal welfare legislation about bear baiting or cock fighting has seen the return of those events. Any promise to repeal the legislation should be matched by saying how that will be achieved. We should hear from the Opposition about that. Since the ban has come about, there have been conversions to drag hunts, including, for instance, the Royal Artillery Hunt in Wiltshire. Another, perhaps wider, group of hunts has gone over to drag hunting, albeit reluctantly, intending to stay within the law. Vicky Atkinson, the joint master of the Vale of Lune Hunt, noted the increased interest in her pack and declared in the Westmorland Gazette that,
	"most people come for the spectacle . . . It's different than it used to be . . . but it's still good to go out in the countryside, ride horses and follow the pack of hounds and just generally enjoy the day".
	There have been some questions about the legislation, which is robust, but there have been some exemptions. I would like to draw the Minister's attention to the use of a bird of prey. The Newcastle Evening Chronicle reports Mark Shotton of the South Durham Hunt as stating:
	"We also use an eagle and that has been a godsend to us, because it covers us legally".
	Will the Minister respond to that and assure us that that is not an acceptable exemption?
	I shall end my speech, but I say to the hunting community that after the ban, if it thinks imaginatively and sticks together as a group, it will find that life is not such a drag. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Hoyle: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate. It is right that we look at the consequences of the Act during the 12 months since it came into force. I am pleased that he has examined the different aspects of that and that drag hunting is becoming more widespread. He also dealt with the possibility of the dire consequences of a ban on hunting that had been predicted, and its effect on the countryside, particularly in relation to jobs. It was said at the time that there might be 16,000 to 20,000 jobs at risk—I believe that was the Countryside Alliance's figure. We always disputed that because it seemed to be exaggerated; the Burns report clearly spelt out that there could be 700 direct jobs and anywhere between 6,000 and 7,000 indirect jobs affected by the ban over a period. We know that those dire consequences have not taken place.
	The effect on the countryside and on jobs has not happened for several reasons. First, as I said, the claims were greatly exaggerated. Let us consider that in agriculture some 9,000 jobs per annum are going anyway; those are being replaced and the countryside is still thriving because the hunts are still in place, redundancies have not happened and, as my noble friend said, other activities are replacing traditional hunting and drag hunting is coming to the fore. I hope that all of us can unite—I agreed with the Countryside Alliance on other matters and I said that to my noble friend who was connected with it. We have had a joint campaign on public services, bus services, school closures and, particularly, on the current threat to post offices. Many post offices are being closed and their businesses might be taken away from them if the card system is removed. That is for another day—at the moment we are discussing the economic effects of the ban on hunting which have not been seen and are not there.
	Also untrue was the claim that fox hunting was a method of pest control. I have always disputed that and I estimated that, at most, some 4 to 6 per cent of foxes were killed by hunting. If we relied on hunts to control foxes in my area we would be overrun by them, but other means are used, particularly shooting. As we saw during the foot and mouth outbreak, it makes little difference whether hunting is going on or not. Having said that, I am not quite as optimistic as my noble friend about what is actually happening in the countryside. I believe that there might be a lot of hunting, much of which is illegal. I am not the only one who believes that. The League Against Cruel Sports has estimated that probably 40 per cent of hunts are flouting the law in one way or another at different times.
	An article in the Sunday Times on 12 February claimed that, in the week before the Hunting Act was passed, reporters went out with a hunt in Wales and killed four foxes using a full pack of 18 dogs. The article also referred to the BBC's "The Last Tally Ho" programme, broadcast that Sunday night, about the Vale of White Horse hunt in Gloucestershire. One huntsman with the hunt said:
	"We hunted foxes all day and I don't care who knows about it. We were very lucky. We got away with a proper day's hunting".
	He claimed that the hunt continued to do this.
	So there we have it—an open admission from a hunt. The hunt that the Sunday Times went with was anonymous; this one was actually named in the programme. We cannot think that all hunting has ceased. As I say, it is taking place, and we need to examine how far the Act is being flouted. The League Against Cruel Sports has made 40 complaints to the police about 30 different hunts, but no action has been taken so far. This is something that we need to examine in the future.
	There have also been breaches of the Act in relation to mink hunting. There have been reports of packs of hounds having been seen in rivers. The claim is that they are hunting rats, although that seems extremely unlikely as rats go to ground and seek shelter very quickly. There have also been reports of hare coursing, as well as hunting with beagles. The claim is that they are not hare coursing, but are after rabbits. Then there are the stag hunts. It seems that at least three of the stag hunts are using two hounds. It is legal to do so to bring out the stag, but instead of the stag being dispatched when it comes out, it is chased by another two hounds. The chase goes on for hours until the stag is exhausted, and it is either dispensed with or left. It appears that there is also cub culling, although this is far more difficult to witness and to prove, because cub hunting usually takes place early in the morning or later in the evening. That is another breach of the Act.
	My noble friend also referred to birds of prey, which have featured in allegations about cub hunting. One side of a copse is taken with an eagle owl or a golden eagle, and then there is a chase from the other side. Again, we need to look at that to see if the law is being breached.
	While I am satisfied, as my noble friend Lord Harrison has explained eloquently in his usual way, that a lot of hunts are complying with the law, I must ask the Minister to address aspects of the legislation and perhaps promise to investigate. Could legislation, which seems to be needed, be enacted to give police access to land and to investigate offences where there is reason to believe that an offence has taken place? I believe that needs to be strengthened. I hope that my noble friend will say what can be done about that.
	In addition, can breaches of the Hunting Act be recorded so that we will all be made aware of what is happening? I cited the League Against Cruel Sports, but it is obvious that a lot more reports are being made to the police, some of which are not about breaches of the Hunting Act at all. They are about something that none of us has been opposed to. I certainly would not be opposed to people going to the countryside to exercise horses or being in drag hunts, and so on. Nevertheless, there are those issues, so perhaps my noble friend could have a look at them.
	A lot of terrier work with hunts seems to be taking place, as it was before. The terrier men still seem to be there. While we know that, legally, if game are in danger they can be put under ground, it seems to be far more than that. Will my noble friend review the code of conduct on that? What information can he offer us? I mentioned what seems to be the illegal use of birds of prey. I know that many falconers are very concerned about the way in which they are being used by hunts in what may be a breach of the law. Will the Minister look at that to see whether, under the exemption in paragraph 6 of the schedule, that loophole could be closed? What reports have been received from police forces throughout the country in relation to hunting and hunting activities? I look forward to a lot more information on that.
	I agree with my noble friend that good progress has been made. Time is passing and drag hunting will become more prevalent. It was never the intention of this side that we should spoil people having the pleasure of exercising horses in that way. It will be a feature of the countryside for a long time to come. Having said that, there are many breaches of the Act: indeed, a pro-hunting Member of the other place boasted to me that he is hunting and killing more foxes than he did before. That is why these matters need to be looked at. I look forward to my noble friend saying what is being done.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, the House should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Harrison for providing this opportunity to revisit and reflect on the outcome of the legislation. The House is well aware that whenever I spoke in the tumultuous and passionate debates that we had, it was always from the standpoint that I could not tolerate the training of dogs to tear live animals apart, either for the protection of property or for sport.
	I was always conscious that people on the other side of this Chamber and of the argument were sincere and honest when they said that a ban would have a serious impact on their communities. I always accepted that. It could be that there have been serious consequences. In a useful introduction, my noble friend Lord Harrison trailed his coat on what was said would happen and what is actually happening. What we can do is reflect, but it is far too soon to do so within two years of the passing of legislation and the opportunity that was given to a range of people to come to terms with a new kind of life. I am not particularly concerned with the manner in which fox hunting is replaced, because that depends on how those who wish to exercise their rights do so within the law. I always start from the viewpoint that this is a law-abiding country, and that the people on the other side of the argument from me are law-abiding. All that I read and see in the papers and on television is that the tumult and turmoil that was forecast has yet to come about.
	That could have been due to the fact that wrong intelligence was fed into the debate, by those who wished to retain fox hunting, of the dire consequences that would arise. If they are honest—I believe that they are—they will agree with me that the dire consequences that they forecast have not come about. At the same time, those organisations on my side of the argument have not made too much of the fact that it is clear that the law is not being kept wholly and fully by every person to whom it applies. I take the view after more than 30 years as a Member of Parliament that it is not reasonable to assume that, from day one or midnight on day one, ipso facto the whole thing changes.
	I readily admit that community life in many parts of the country has been altered but, having said that, I come from a community—the mining community up north; there are many others—whose members' way of life was changed and decimated beyond recognition without their permission, but it happened. We all know that communities have such experiences visited on them, where their world and life is turned upside down—there is the instance of the motor car industry in recent times—just as we were told that the world and life of the fox-hunting communities were turned upside down.
	I always took the view that there was no such thing as a fox-hunting community, because all the evidence I saw was that many people were in favour of fox hunting, almost as many as were against it. One of the bedevilments of the past, and perhaps of the future, is the reliance on public opinion polls of one kind or another. I am deeply grateful to this House and to the many people who over many years fought the good fight and finally achieved the Bill's passage. With the Bill's passage a stage was reached; we are in a transition period where we need not only to reflect, but possibly as time passes to make amendments to it to take into account whether that law is right.
	To the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, whose views I deeply respect, I say that the House would welcome any evidence to show that the forecasts of the disasters that were to follow from the Bill's passage have come about. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us about the effect on his department and the police of attempting to follow the law. I honestly think that proponents on both sides of the argument are now reflecting and pausing for breath. It is not that the issue will go away. There will always be people who feel that they were wronged and that they need to do something about it. But so far as I am concerned, I am pleased that after much passionate debate the Bill was eventually passed by this House, and while I sincerely respect the views of those on the other side of the argument, it is now time to move on.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I deeply respect the sincerity of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, who has just spoken, but I should point out to him that in fact the ban on fox hunting was rejected in this House. The Hunting Act 2004 has failed as an animal welfare measure; indeed, it is having a negative impact on animal welfare and the proper management of wild mammals. There is no doubt that a lot more foxes have died over the past 12 months than was the case previously. I am sure that we all contribute in our thinking to the welfare of the fox. The Act prohibits the method of culling of wild mammals using dogs, which even the Minister at the time when the Bill was introduced, Alun Michael, accepted under some circumstances could cause the least suffering. The negative effect of the Act on animal welfare results entirely from the fact that in its current form, the Act's primary purpose is to end the human activity of hunting rather than to regulate the culling and management of wild mammals by avoiding unnecessary suffering via a licensed system rather than a free for all. It is therefore not an animal welfare measure. Rather it is one that seeks to proscribe the human activity of hunting, regardless of the consequences for animal welfare.
	It follows that for the Act to be a genuine welfare measure, it should have considered not only hunting but all other methods of control to ensure that the most appropriate method is used in the different circumstances that may arise. Whatever the method used for culling, the aim should be to ensure that there is no avoidable suffering. We should ponder the fact that the legislation affects every dog owner in England and Wales because it makes the chasing of any wild animal other than a rat or a rabbit illegal, which is an important point. The Act makes no provision to ensure that alternatives to hunting are conducted according to best practice so as to minimise suffering, especially that which results from wounding. Is that being regulated properly? I doubt it.
	The Hunting Act ignores the warnings made in the Burns report that in the event of a ban on hunting, it would be probable that farmers and others would resort more frequently to alternative methods of killing foxes, deer, hares and perhaps mink. Paragraph 6.13 of the report states:
	"It follows that the welfare of animals which are hunted should be compared with the welfare of animals which, on a realistic assessment, would be likely to result from the legal methods used by farmers and others to manage populations of these animals in the event of a hunting ban".
	In a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister dated 14 May 2003, the Minister Alun Michael accepted that in an indeterminate number of cases, hunting could be the method of least suffering.
	I want to concentrate on one particular aspect of hunting which deeply concerns me because I have a better knowledge of it than perhaps is the case for some other forms. In the forestry and upland areas in particular, no provision was made in the Act to take account of the difference in topography or the needs of fox control in different areas of the country. Nowhere is this felt more acutely than in large areas of forestry and in upland areas, such as is found in Wales and the Fells. The Act fails to take account of the fact that even where the Burns report expressed a tentative preference for a particular method of control, it noted that alternative methods were not always better at taking account of the circumstances, such as topography and the way in which and by whom those methods were used. It states:
	"Efficient lamping requires good vehicular access. Its usefulness can therefore be limited in areas with rough terrain and steep slopes"—
	and dense forestry. Due to the topography of Wales and other upland areas, there was a greater dependency on the use of dogs for fox control. Certainly in the area that I represented in the other place, there were a number of gun packs operating with hounds. The terrain, coupled with high densities of sheep production and large areas of forestry, meant that controlling foxes using dogs was the most practical method. I can testify to that.
	The farming unions in Wales are establishing the impact that the Hunting Act is having on Welsh farmers, and this survey is likely to be published in late autumn of this year. In particular, the Act's restriction on the number of dogs that can be used renders the exemption impractical in areas of forestry. The vice-president of NFU Wales has said:
	"The exemption in the Hunting Act that allows a maximum of two dogs to be used for flushing foxes to guns makes effective fox control all but impossible in many areas of Wales. A survey of the Forestry Commission Wales showed that much of the woodland they managed is made up of plantations over 1,000 ha in size. It is totally unrealistic to expect two hounds to find, let alone flush, foxes to guns, from such large areas".
	I regard these points as extremely important, and will give some practical examples in a few minutes. The Burns report itself noted that in upland areas—where the fox population causes more damage to sheep rearing and game-management interests, and where there is a greater perceived need for control—few alternatives are available to the use of dogs either to flush out to guns or for digging out. In the event of a ban on hunting, it is possible that the welfare of foxes in upland areas could be adversely affected.
	In our area, the fox is certainly a pest. There is no question about that. Thousands of acres in the uplands are a monoculture of conifer softwood trees. After the Second World War, many of the landlords in my part of the world sold out sheep walks which were planted with conifers. This created a dense habitat where foxes thrived. One hunt that I know of has legally discharged its duty to pest control by controlling 500 foxes per annum in the past 30 years. That has kept the fox population stable; it has not vanished. Foxes still thrive in the area, but not in excessive numbers. The only possible method of flushing was with a pack of hounds, and certainly more than two dogs.
	In those upland areas in Wales that I know best—and in the Lake District and the south-west—the density of sheep stocking is second only to that in New Zealand. I can testify that foxes take at least 10 per cent of the lamb flock if uncontrolled. The value of those lambs is anything from £30 to £40 per head. On a thousand-ewe upland flock, this is worth some £3,000 to £4,000 per annum. Indeed, many of these farms only have a net income of about £12,000 per annum, anyway. Certainly in my own experience of sheep farming, I frequently lost between 30 and 40 lambs from a 200-ewe flock per annum. It is right that we should be able to control those foxes but not eliminate them. This is a very viable method of control. It is rather sad, but if foxes went around urban areas killing the family cats, there would be a very different reaction to the fox. It is a pest, and we cannot get away from that.
	The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has indicated that there are alternatives and indeed he has said that drag hunting is an alternative. So it is, but it does not address the question of pest control, which is really leeching income from the upland farming communities that I know. There is no doubt that these alternatives are fair but that that must surely be the answer, in conjunction with licensed hunting, where things are laid down so that there is no abuse of animal welfare concerns. That would be extremely important.
	As for breaches of the Hunting Act 2004, that is a matter for the police. I would not condone the breaking of the law, and the police have the authority to pursue that if they have sufficient evidence. What I believe is coming out of the Act is the serious question whether the law is enforceable. That is a question on which the jury is out at the moment. There are alleged breaches of the Hunting Act—and indeed, if this is the case, this must be pursued; but there is no evidence of prosecutions at the moment. So we must take the emotion out of this issue and license hunts where that is appropriate and they must obey the rules. Foxes have to be controlled as a pest, and if hunts wish to pursue other methods such as drag hunting, it is their perfect right to do so.
	We can look at this logically, and as more evidence comes to be as to how the Act is maturing, then we can see what the case is for keeping the status quo or for reviving licensed hunting. But we must look at this in a very sober way and evaluate the evidence.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on securing the debate this morning. In his Motion, he calls attention to,
	"the development of alternatives to fox hunting in the light of the Hunting Act 2004".
	It is within this Motion that I wish to respond.
	I believe that the Hunting Act 2004 fails totally as an animal welfare measure and is having a negative impact both on animal welfare and on the proper management of wild mammals. The Act prohibits the method of culling wild mammals using dogs, which even then, as other noble Lords have said, the Minister, Alun Michael, accepted could be the method of least suffering in certain circumstances. This forces land managers to use methods which can cause more suffering.
	The negative effect of the Act on animal welfare results entirely from the fact that the Act's primary purpose is to end the human activity of hunting rather than to ensure that in the management or culling of wild mammals, unnecessary suffering is avoided. It follows that, to be a genuine welfare measure, the Act should have looked at not only hunting but all methods of control, to ensure that the most appropriate method was used in each circumstance, and that, in the conduct of the method of culling, there was no suffering which could be avoidable.
	There is no recognition in the Act of the prolonged suffering that can result from wounding or of that caused by trapping, even in a cage, and other available methods. The Act fails to make it a legal requirement for wounded animals to be followed up by the use of dogs and despatched as quickly as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, has particularly raised the difficulties that the farmers in Wales face, which is of particular concern, and quoted the figures of 10 per cent loss of lambs in the lambing season, the value of these being between £30 and £40 per head. I would like to remind noble Lords that the figures back in 2003 were that 2 per cent of lambs nationally were being killed by foxes at a value cost of £13 million, which, at today's estimate, with the same number, would be up to £15 million.
	In many circumstances the use of two dogs is totally inadequate to ensure that wounded mammals are located, or are located sooner than later. The two-dog restriction also removes the benefit to the quarry species, in terms of dispersal, with the implications for disease, and in terms of the availability of sufficient food. This leads to a search for food and drives foxes into villages and towns, which is an unnatural way of life that often ends in painful and messy deaths, many upon our roads.
	The clean kill with a rifle may be a humane way of killing a fox, and it is the preferred method of some gamekeepers. However, this method brings with it other welfare issues. There is a real issue of wounding foxes as they present an unpredictable and moving target and a killing cannot always be guaranteed. If the shooting occurs during the breeding season, it may result in the death by starvation of the cubs still underground. Before the Hunting Act, hunting took place between mid-August and early March, thus avoiding the time when vixens were nursing their young. The shooting season and snaring of foxes is indiscriminate and has no close season. It is therefore likely, since the hunting ban, that the increased shooting of foxes will result in an increase in the number of orphaned cubs, most of which will starve to death. That is surely something that all noble Lords regret.
	Shooting can be non-selective, as it is as likely to kill the milking vixens as it is the old and infirm. Shooting is also a danger to the public, as a bullet from a centre-fire rifle may travel four kilometres. As the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, has said, there is a particular problem in forestry and upland areas. Burns said in paragraph 5.24 of his report:
	"Efficient lamping requires good vehicular access. Its usefulness can therefore be limited in areas with rough terrain and steep slopes. It also requires terrain that allows safe shooting".
	The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, referred to the National Farmers Union of Wales and its concerns about fox control, which it considers all but impossible now.
	Three years ago, while enjoying a holiday in Wales, I spoke with many farmers and huntsmen about the difficulty of fox control in those upland areas. There the terrain, coupled with the high densities of sheep production and the large areas of forestry, meant that controlling foxes using dogs was the most practical method.
	John Thorley, the former chief executive of and now the political adviser to the National Sheep Association, said earlier this year—on 10 March 2006—that,
	"sheep farmers in Wales have been put in a ridiculous position: they cannot effectively protect their newborn lambs from foxes; they cannot use a terrier below ground to control foxes if it is to protect livestock, although they can if it is to protect gamebirds; and farmers and hunts can use a maximum of only two dogs to flush a fox to a gun, which is simply ineffective".
	I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for his contribution and also for his courtesy in coming across to explain that he cannot be here for the wind-up speeches. He is attending the memorial service for his noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees. I am sure that all of us would wish to extend our sympathies to those attending. His contribution, as always, was sincere.
	I was very disappointed that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, did not address in his 15 minutes the issue of the welfare of the foxes. His speeches are always sincere—I know he is a sincere man—but the Hunting Act has not promoted animal welfare at all as far as wild mammals are concerned. It is a disappointment to me and to other noble Lords that in this opportunity a year later we have to reflect on the increasing risk to wild mammals that this Act proposes.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for what she said about my noble friend Lord Graham. He is at a memorial service. He is the last person to want to be discourteous to the House, as the House knows.
	It is now 18 months since the Hunting Act passed into law. We should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Harrison for giving us the opportunity to take stock of what has happened in the intervening period. The issue has clearly lost none of its controversy. Those who believed passionately in the right to hunt wild mammals with dogs in 2004 continue to believe that just as passionately today. Those who opposed hunting then and wanted to see it banned believe just as strongly today that hunting wild mammals for sport and pleasure is wrong. I doubt that all the arguments that we heard then and have heard in small measure today have persuaded a single Member of this House to change his or her mind on the issue.
	We can say with some fairness that few of the dire consequences confidently predicted by some—including some in this House—during the passage of the Bill have materialised. The rural economy as a whole is still buoyant. Widespread social unrest has clearly not occurred. Businesses associated with hunting, including those in the horse industry, are generally doing well. Few if any jobs have been lost as a result of the ban. Most importantly, in the context of today's debate, hunts are still meeting regularly. During the passage of the Hunting Act, the Government were very clear that the Act would not prevent the hunts meeting and riding within the law if they so wished. We are happy to note that this appears to be what they have done.
	We have heard some questions about the legality of what some of these hunts are doing. My noble friend Lord Hoyle referred to this in his speech. It is for the police to investigate the facts in particular cases and for the prosecution authorities to take action if they believe that the law has been broken. So far this has not happened.
	In principle, the Government welcome the emergence of trail hunting and other alternative activities, because these have helped not only to ensure that the predicted consequences—some dire—have not come to pass, but to demonstrate clearly what we have always known: it is perfectly possible for people to enjoy riding with their hounds without having to kill another creature for the sake of sport. I say "in principle" because the onus remains on the hunts to demonstrate that they are genuinely intending to stay within the law and are not trying to use the new activities as some sort of subterfuge for engaging in illegal hunting.
	We have also heard that the continuing existence of the hunts should not be taken as proof that they will continue to operate in the longer term. It has been said, though perhaps not today, that they are engaging in legal trail hunting only while they wait for the Act to be overturned. This may or may not be so, but it does not alter the unarguable fact that they are still in business and can operate within the law. Any decision to stop these activities in the future will therefore be down to the individuals involved and not as a direct and inevitable consequence of the Act.
	We have also heard claims that the Act is unclear and unenforceable. There are calls for it to be amended or even scrapped. I have to say to your Lordships—which will be no surprise—that the prospect of making changes to the Act in any direction, even if needed, is minimal. My predecessor in this post—many Members will recall him standing here on many occasions when the House was much fuller than now—remarked more than once on this issue that we are where we are. Amendments preferred by a majority in this House, for example, would almost certainly be unacceptable to a majority in another place.
	In fact, we do not believe that the Act is unclear. The provisions are easily understood. Just because someone asserts that there is a loophole does not mean that there is one. Nor do the Government believe that the Act is unenforceable. The police are devoting an appropriate proportion of their resources to this matter, which is not by any stretch of the imagination the most important issue facing them in rural areas. That few prosecutions have so far been launched does not mean that, if evidence of law-breaking emerges, cases will not be brought.
	I want to deal with the points raised by noble Lords in this short debate, first in response to the remarks by my noble friend Lord Harrison and others about exemptions within the Act. I want to remind the House respectfully that it is not for the Government to define precisely what is or is not hunting under the law. That is for the courts to decide in the light of cases brought before them. However, the Government are aware of those concerns and have made their view clear in public, both through the Defra website and in response to correspondence.
	Both my noble friends Lord Harrison and Lord Hoyle referred to the falconry exemption. The Act is very clear. Dogs may be used to flush a wild mammal from cover for the purpose of enabling a bird of prey to hunt the mammal. It follows that any subsequent hunting of that wild animal must be undertaken by the bird of prey and not by the dogs. The Government do not therefore believe that the exemption allows the use of a token bird of prey to permit hunting with dogs to continue.
	In the case of the stalking and flushing exemption, the Act requires that all the conditions of the exemption must be strictly observed, including: that no more than two dogs should be used to find or flush the wild mammal; that the two dogs must be under sufficiently close control to achieve the task in hand; and that the wild mammal must be shot dead by a competent person as soon as possible after it has been found or flushed. We do not believe that the exemption permits the prolonged chasing of wild mammals, either with the dogs used to flush the mammal or with more than one pair of dogs in relay.
	My noble friend Lord Harrison raised the question of whether the police needed an additional right of access to private land to effect arrests. We are not aware of any requests from the police for this power. The Act already gives the police powers of access to land for the purposes of searching for and seizing evidence when they suspect an illegal act is being or has been committed. In addition, the police can arrest anyone they suspect of committing a crime on public land or by summons after the event.
	My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked about the continuation of terrier work. The code of conduct exists; it can be reviewed, and may be in due course, although if terriers are breaking the law, it is down to the police to investigate and prosecute as appropriate. My noble friend also raised the question—as did my noble friend Lord Harrison—of police access. Of course, they have access powers already; it is only in order to arrest that they cannot enter.
	My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked about breaches being recorded. Recordability on police computers can be added to by a statutory instrument but this would cover only successful prosecutions, not allegations or suspicions of any illegal hunting. Court statistics are always available to show the number of successful prosecutions.
	The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, spoke about a number of matters. He made the comment that chasing of any wild mammal by a dog is illegal. That is not strictly true; it is the intention of the human, not the activity of the animal, that matters in terms of the Act. The House knows that the noble Lord is a great expert on upland areas. He suggested that the Act is causing significant problems for hill farmers, but there is little clear impartial evidence of that. However, we note that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, made the point in his important report; indeed, my predecessor—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—acknowledged that there were specific concerns about the uplands while the Bill was being debated in this House. However, the pro-hunt majority in this House specifically rejected attempts at that time to deal with the issue. I am afraid that I must tell the noble Lord that the scope for amendment at this time is limited for the reasons that I have already stated.
	The noble Lord also said that many more foxes had been killed since the Act came into force than previously. There is no clear evidence of that. There are clearly allegations that that is the case, largely made by those who opposed the passing of the Bill. We do not believe that there is evidence of there being fewer foxes in rural areas now. There is no reason why more foxes should have been killed; it is worth pointing out—this was part of the argument made during the passage of the Bill—that hunting only ever contributed to a relatively small overall number of foxes being killed.
	I have done my best to answer the points that have been made in this short but interesting debate. I once again thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for giving us the opportunity to review the matter. I restate that, so far as the Government are concerned, the emergence of legal alternatives to the hunting of wild mammals is to be welcomed.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I also thank those colleagues who have apologised to me personally for being unable to attend the debate as they were attending the memorial service for our friend and colleague Lord Merlyn-Rees. I especially thank my noble friend Lord Hoyle, who supplemented the part of my speech which I had to abandon. I reiterate one of the points that he made—there simply has not been the haemorrhaging of jobs, the slaughter of hounds and horses, and the Armageddon that we were told would happen as a consequence of the ban, for which I am very glad.
	I say to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, and to my friend and colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that I believe I was talking about animal welfare. The Minister echoed my next point. If there were an animal welfare problem with the night shooting of foxes—lamping, the method recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Burns—it was the case before the ban as well as after. It is thought that 120,000 foxes used to be killed every year and that about 20,000 to 25,000 were killed through the agency of the hunt. I should have liked to hear the constructive plans of the parties opposite to tidy up that bit of animal welfare in improving the shooting skills of those charged with that job.
	I end on a bright note. The whole emphasis of my speech was that, far from seeing problems, I see real opportunities for job creation, for prosperity and for communities in the countryside to strengthen themselves if they approach this question positively. Last week I opened the Chester Chronicle, as I do every Friday, and saw the headline "Saddle Up", as Cheshire—renowned as fox-hunting country—wants to participate in its perceived £60 million equine industry, which is part of the £3.4 billion horse industry in the United Kingdom. More and more of our citizens in the countryside and beyond want to participate in those sports. If those opportunities are seized, everyone can enjoy a vibrant countryside which is rich with communities of people enjoying themselves, maintaining jobs and building a future. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Electricity Supply

Lord Tombs: rose to call attention to the problems in the electricity supply industry created by the absence of a strategic decision mechanism; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I first welcome those loyal followers of what has become an annual debate for their attendance today during Easter week, which is for many a time of holiday with children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, the element of chance in obtaining a balloted debate has finally interrupted a steady flow of more convenient dates which I have had the good fortune to obtain.
	Nevertheless, the problems remain and I intend, in this fifth debate in the series, to address them again and to examine, in more detail than hitherto, the absence of strategic planning which has led us to the array of problems that face us today.
	Since privatisation of the electricity supply industry the organisation has been without leadership. It has been totally reactive to external stimuli, masquerading as the discipline of a free market. It began life with a rich endowment of coal, oil and nuclear power stations and has since invested only in gas turbine stations and wind generators. The first of these was influenced by the attractions of cheap gas, low capital cost and short construction times. The second was influenced by huge subsidies, making the investment rewarding and virtually risk free. As a result, diversity continued to be provided only by the ageing inheritance of coal and nuclear stations.
	In the past couple of years the fault lines in the manipulated market forces have become apparent. The promise of wind power is being met to a lesser extent than planned—and even that at increased cost. Opposition to land-based wind has grown and the costs of offshore wind have risen beyond expectations. The vulnerability of gas supplies, quite apart from their price, has become patent to the most obdurate proponent during the past year and nuclear power has somewhat hurriedly been restored to active consideration after decades of neglect. All of these developments were foreseeable. They have formed part of our regular debates on this and other energy matters.
	The future of our economy depends heavily upon reliable and competitive supplies of energy and electricity supply plays a pivotal part in that equation. The use of a diversity of primary fuels has served us and other countries well, and its abandonment in favour of ill-conceived alternative policies has resulted from the actions of politicians and regulators mistakenly based on a wholly unrealistic belief that competitive short-term market forces would achieve satisfactory long-term results. The absence of any industry-wide management has abdicated responsibility to pressure groups with little knowledge of the technical or economic factors involved. They are too numerous to enumerate, but Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace surely merit acknowledgement, as does Defra support, of course. Then, in addition, academic economists have had a field day and, one hopes, have learnt some practical lessons to illuminate their future activities.
	Overall, the management vacuum in the industry has been filled by a variety of bodies seeking to promulgate their vision of a desirable energy mix, without regard to cost, and usually with inadequate knowledge of the limitations of their proposed solutions. Thus, for example, we have the Council for Sustainable Development being apparently unaware of the intermittent nature of wind energy, but convinced that nuclear energy is not an acceptable solution. Its view is apparently shared by the Select Committee for Environmental Audit in another place, which has advanced the breathtaking proposition that nuclear power will be incapable of contributing to impending electricity shortages within the necessary timescale, apparently quite unaware that the problems we face are not confined to the next 10 or even 20 years, and in ignorance of the scale of the problem and the limitations of renewable sources. Not for nothing are environmentalists sometimes described as "green"—green in this case relating to naivety.
	There is a profound need for an authoritative and objective examination, much of it requiring an ability to use simple arithmetic. It is to be hoped that the current energy review will meet that need. But the need to avoid filling the management vacuum with ephemeral Ministers and peripatetic civil servants has been well demonstrated by the events of the past decade. I again urge Ministers to look to the example of the Electricity Commission, which served the country well for the 25 years preceding the Second World War in 1939. That body also had to deal with a fragmented industry during a period of rapid growth. It brought to its deliberations a deep and practical understanding of the technical issues, which has been absent from so much of government policy.
	Your Lordships will know that I am convinced of the need for nuclear power as an important factor in the solution to our present need to tackle climate change while still remaining industrially competitive. That view is increasingly voiced in many quarters. The offer of Electricité de France—now a major force on our energy scene—to build and operate a nuclear power station is an interesting one. It is well equipped to do this. At a time when the Government seem to be hell-bent on dismantling our own nuclear build capability, it merits serious consideration. The other major player in our electricity market, RWE of Germany, has also urged the construction of new nuclear plant.
	These are welcome signs of an industry undergoing consolidation and gaining confidence in a market organisation quite different from that envisaged at privatisation and from that encouraged by the first directors of Ofgem. They reward my confidence, expressed at that time, that the market would finally overcome the misconceptions of politicians and produce a rationalised industry. Although there are welcome signs of an industry policy emerging, they are fragile and tentative.
	Let me turn now to the more general question of renewable energy, a cult with some devoted disciples. There is plenty of energy available on our planet, but much of it in renewable form is widely dispersed, making its use expensive and environmentally demanding. Add to this the fact that the sources of much renewable energy are intermittent, requiring the expensive support of fossil fuel plant, and the contribution of renewable energy can become less attractive than it seems at first sight. We see these factors at work in the wind energy sector, but they are also apparent in most of the emerging renewable technologies. For example, the apparent attractions of biomass can be substantially offset by the carbon demands of reaping and transporting the crop. Wave power, after 50 years of development here and abroad, is still only at an early pilot stage, and big problems of scale in a very hostile environment have yet to be faced and solved. Tidal barrages involve substantial environmental problems and high cost but may prove attractive at some point.
	Most renewable technologies now being promoted by their individual lobbies are likely to be both expensive and intermittent. The current fashion in this uncertain field seems to be microgeneration, which aims to provide individual households with their own mini-power station, optionally providing central heating. It is argued that they would use gas much more efficiently than large power stations. In principle that is likely to be true, but we rapidly encounter two practical considerations which complicate the issue. The equipment will presumably be designed for the peak demand of the household. If not, a standby connection will be required to top up the domestic installation. Of course, demand for both electricity and heating are less in summer than in winter, so the plant would then have to operate inefficiently at light loads, or be shut down, again requiring a standby mains connection. Since the units taken from the system would be fewer, unit cost would have to be higher in order to recoup the system equipment and operating costs.
	Add to these uncertainties the capital investment required and the need for adequate servicing arrangements, and the case seems to be somewhat more complicated than is being suggested by its many eager supporters. The fact that something can be done is not a sufficient reason to argue that it should be done. Unfortunately, many enthusiasts for the new technologies find this difficult to accept and hope that someone, somewhere, will pick up the tab for their ambitions. My intention here is not to denigrate the examination of new and renewable technologies but to urge that their advantages and disadvantages be properly examined at an early stage. The worst of all worlds would be one in which an essentially unattractive technology is pursued only because of unconstrained enthusiasm.
	An interesting example of this clash of ideology and practicality can be seen in the current approach of green lobbies to the grid, which, it is argued, exists only as a means of building large power stations that have no place in our new, small scale world of energy supply. The real reason for the grid is to deliver large quantities of power to large conurbations. The construction of large power stations certainly took advantage of that primary need to obtain economies of scale. But the ambitions of the wind lobby require the construction of large arrays of windmills onshore and offshore, most in locations remote from demand. Hence, they would require not only the present grid but substantial additions to it. Similar arguments would apply to tidal barrages and wave power installations.
	I have no doubt that renewable power has an important part to play in tackling the problem of climate change and the necessary reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, but at present there is such a widespread belief that renewable power must, by its nature, be economically attractive that minds are all too often closed to the realities. Dreams are necessary in any society, but they provide a negative contribution if they prove to be incapable of achievement and are sold on a false prospectus. For me, the problem is that the present system of government intervention does not provide the necessary technical expertise to strike the balance between dream and reality. For me, the rocks of our future energy policy have to be reliability and affordability. They will be achieved by a combination of renewable sources and base-load generation. The inevitable increased costs will themselves ensure energy savings, not without pain. The essential framework for such a solution will rest upon a mechanism providing a technologically based framework, capable of putting the dreams of environmentalists into perspective,
	That, I believe, is the real challenge of the energy review now being undertaken. It will pose problems that are likely to prove uncomfortable for politicians of all parties, but the resolution of those problems will determine the standard of living and industrial competitiveness that lie at the heart of a modern Western economy. I fervently hope that a correct balance will be struck. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: My Lords, one of the strange things about moving from the other place to here is that when you had been there a while you became one of the old lags; then you come here and you find that all of a sudden you are a new boy again. It is extremely daunting to follow a speaker such as the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, because he speaks with such authority and experience that, as we say in Scotland, to follow him is a bit like trying to tell your granny how to suck eggs. There are some points where we are in broad agreement, but there are other areas where we had the problem of the absence of a strategic decision-making mechanism. We need to look at the options. It is certainly the case that since privatisation there has not been central control. There are clear inadequacies in the nature of the market system even where it has a degree of regulation. I know that people like Dieter Helm of Oxera, the Oxford research associates, have argued in favour of an energy agency. As a politician, I find it a wee bit dangerous creating something whose accountability is perhaps nothing like as effective as it might be, certainly in terms of parliamentary scrutiny and the like.
	Perhaps I should say a couple of things by way of introduction. In another place, I represented a constituency that dug coal. When I started, 5,000 of my constituents were miners. They fed the massive Longannet power station, which I think the noble Lord had a hand in the development of in his day. Sadly, there are now no miners in the area and there is no coal dug in the area, for the simple reason of one of the great hazards of mining, that there was extensive flooding one weekend and a massive and ambitious project that would have sustained that power station for in excess of 30 years was lost. It illustrates one of the problems of trying to get strategic decision-making in the energy field. I used to listen to one of the old colliery managers in my constituency, and he pointed out to me that the initial professional journal of the mining industry was called The Art and Science of Mining. He emphasised the art, because when you are dealing with geology, and the faulting and flooding and the potential for disaster underground, it is as much about art as it is about science. In a number of respects, policy-making for energy is as much an art form as it is about critical path analysis and all the various forms of sophisticated decision-making that we come across.
	By way of illustration, I will give a couple of anecdotes. My constituents dug coal in the Hirst seam into the Longannet power station. I was fortunate as a callow young candidate to go with Alex Eadie, who was the very distinguished energy Minister in the 1970s and was a great enthusiast for coal. One of his great prides was sinking the shaft that was going to feed Longannet power station. I remember being there and having the optimism of the time. But in those halcyon days it was not enough just to feed our coal fired power station; arguments were advanced for new nuclear stations. I remember the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Bruce Millan, telling me that the decision taken on the construction of the Torness power station, just about 50 miles up the Forth estuary from Longannet, was based on two premises. The first was that there would be throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s a 4.5 per cent per annum increase in demand for electricity. Secondly, and perhaps more tellingly, in the days of state-directed socialist electricity planning, there were two companies, Babcock and Weir of Cathcart, great west of Scotland engineering companies which had no orders in the book in their power generation departments. It was a fairly compelling argument that to get orders in the book a power station should be built and, after all, by that time other people would want to buy it.
	There is a ready echo through the history of electricity generation of the cries from the supply side of the industry. It is not insignificant that in recent years—in the past 18 months—the number of members of the Nuclear Industry Association has doubled from just over 50 to well in excess of 100. They are circling around; they see that there is a chance of doing business and they want to get a bit of the action. In some respects, one of the problems of the electricity supply debate at the moment is the rather hysterical cries from people who wish to supply the nuclear industry. I happen to be in favour of new build, but I am not necessarily saying that we should build right away. There are compelling reasons why we will not be cutting the first sod for some time.
	It is clear what we have seen in the past 20 years since the post-strike destruction of the coal industry and the response to Chernobyl. Little attention was given to the inadequacy of Soviet construction, the poor design and the even worse maintenance record of that industry. Less attention was given to those factors than to the dreadful effects of the Chernobyl tragedy, and the translation was made that what happened there could happen here. You had this almost Orwellian response to nuclear power of "four legs good, two legs bad". That ridiculously simplistic reaction to an industry, and the hysteria that often surrounds this opposition, is dangerous. That has also set back the industry some time.
	We did not have to worry about that, because when we stopped building nuclear power stations we started building gas stations. We did so because the EU Commission said that instead of burning only the gas that you could not find any use for—the old sour gas that was burnt in Peterhead off the Miller field—we should burn gas that frankly any chemist would tell you is far more valuable for other purposes. We are saddled with them now; we have a commitment. They were cheap, they were easy to construct, and very few people were involved in the running of the stations. There were commendable reasons. In those days—15 years ago—we were not thinking too much about the carbon effect of burning gas. We knew that it was a bit cleaner than coal and it did not involve people going down into the bowels of the earth. It did not have dreadful consequences for the health of the workers and therefore it was a convenient option.
	Now the chickens have come home to roost, and we find that the price of gas is almost insupportable. It would be insupportable if we had serious options to take advantage of. It was clear that there were arguments then that could have been advanced that would have suggested that gas would be the answer to our problems, although scant attention was paid to the potential supply issue. People made noises about whether we could depend on the Maghreb states, Nigeria and perhaps the former Soviet Union as potential suppliers. For each of them, there are varying causes for optimism. In the Nigerian case we can be a bit more optimistic. Until recently the former Soviet Union countries and Russia have had a very good record of sustaining supply, and I am not sure whether you can use the Ukrainian experience as a sign of a lack of dependability of the Russians. The Russians are so dependent on the revenues they get from gas that it might almost be argued that the fact that they were not getting much from the Ukrainians was as much a reason why they did it as anything else.
	Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, was a wee bit severe about the renewables lobby in some respects. Certainly, it receives a massive subsidy through the renewables obligation. It is true that a number of the technologies are not yet mature. He quoted at justifiable length the example of microgeneration. It has to be said that, as yet, British Gas has not been able to secure any equipment. It has provided resources for such an eventuality, but it has not been able to spend the money because the kit is not available. It is unlikely to be available for about another year and a half. So an apparently important aspect of renewable technology is nearly three years behind schedule, although it has to be said that it is good only for households which are on the gas grid. Some of the poorest and most remote households are not on the gas grid, so it would be of little advantage to them anyway.
	We know that the windy parts of the United Kingdom tend to be the least attractive places to stay, and because of that, there is no demand for electricity there. From what I can gather, the people who live there tend to spend their time looking out their windows and find the idea of windmills or associated cable lines as being offensive. Frankly, the bijou "But 'n Bens" of the Scottish bourgeoisie take up a disproportionate amount of time. I am a wee bit worried that local authorities on the Beauly to Denny line, which went through a bit of my old patch, are being disproportionately influenced by these people. They look as if they are going to cave in and just hold public inquiries rather than exercise their democratic rights and do what they should be doing by redirecting the line. They are leaving it to these great political terrorists—"terrorists" is the wrong way of putting it. The Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament will have to make the decision. As an enthusiast for devolution, I have to say that one of the things that has yet to emerge from the Scottish Parliament is a degree of political courage in taking on issues for fear of offending a great number of its people. Certainly, it has shown some courage in banning cigarette smoking in pubs, but taking on in a rational way an issue such as the supply of electricity seems to be beyond the capabilities of that body.
	If we are going to have a rational post-White Paper, or whatever it is going to be, discussion in the summer, we will require some form of mechanism. To that extent, I agree with the noble Lord. Since privatisation and the demise of the Department of Energy, we have seen responsibilities split between Defra and the DTI. Responsibility for protecting those who are in fuel poverty is divided among more people than just those two ministries and the regulator.
	If the Government are going to grasp the nuclear nettle, they will have to take account of the CoRWM report on nuclear waste. They will need to establish a study on a single reactor type being licensed and adopted by all investors. If that is not the French reactor, I am not sure that EDF will come in. I am sure that the noble Lord would concede that the fact that we had five AGRs, all of a different design, meant that the cost of maintenance and construction was excessive. If we are to replace 10 gigawatts of electricity generation, which is probably what we will require, we will need five identical stations built to a demanding timetable. We will need planning procedures which give objectors reasonable rights to be heard, while denying them the opportunity to indulge in vexatious litigation. Moreover, the monitoring and licensing procedures will have to achieve a balance between speed of construction and proper health and safety.
	We therefore face a number of tasks—we could look at other areas—but it is quite clear that if responsibility is to be spread between a plethora of departments, we will have bureaucratic chaos the like of which we are enjoying at the moment. I am not suggesting that we reconstitute a Department of Energy—reinventing that wheel would take too long and would be too difficult—but post-White Paper, or whatever means of announcement the Government choose, we need to appoint someone of Cabinet rank to drive through whatever energy policy we adopt. Whether it contains a nuclear component or not, we need a single, responsible, senior Minister with resource who can take on the responsibilities of the plethora of departments to ensure the kind of decision-making and the kind of partnership between potential investors and customers that we need. If that were achieved, many of our desirable and laudable energy ambitions would be realised, but, at the moment, the vacuum presents a challenge which we have yet to address.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, in absence of the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill of Bengarve, it has fallen to me to follow the other O'Neill, and I do so with pleasure. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, who year after year has secured a balloted debate on the electricity industry. It has usually taken place in January, but this year, it happens to be in April. Again and again, the noble Lord has spelt out with devastating clarity the need for a much more structured framework within which decisions can be taken about the future of electricity generation.
	The Select Committee on Science and Technology recently spent a couple of hours with the Minister for Energy, Malcolm Wicks. I found much of what the Minister said reassuring. He used the word "framework" over and over again. Certainly, those of us who have received copies of the submissions in response to the request for contributions to the review have been impressed by how many of the major players have repeatedly stressed the need for a clear, long-term framework. Without wanting to replicate what I said in the debate on 16 February, I point out that many of them said that it must be a clear, long-term framework for carbon. That is what is needed above all. I am sure that there is a great deal of agreement on that.
	The noble Lord, Lord Tombs, has again done us proud today. Perhaps he will not be too embarrassed if I say that I shall send the Hansard report of this debate to a number of my Front Bench colleagues in another place, and I shall draw attention to the noble Lord's speech.
	The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan, too, spoke with huge experience in these matters. He, too, referred to the absence of a strategic mechanism. I hope that the Government will feel able to take up his idea of a single Cabinet Minister in charge. I would like to see the Department of Energy reformed. The argument in the past against a Department of Energy has been that its remit would be too narrow and that it would therefore be a minor player against the other Secretaries of State of much larger departments. I am not sure that that is true now, but these issues ought to be pursued.
	I shall not attempt otherwise to comment on the two speeches that have been made, because I want refer to one of the major players in this area; namely, British Energy plc. I want to refer to the restructuring arrangements that were introduced after that company ran into financial difficulties. In this, I have been greatly helped by what I regard as an admirable report of the National Audit Office published last month, The Restructuring of British Energy.
	Secondly, I draw attention to the role that British Energy might be able to play in the future supply of electricity and what the Government need to do to make it achievable. I am sure that the House will recollect that BE got into financial difficulties in 2002, largely because of the sharp fall in the wholesale price of electricity under the influence of NETA, the new electricity trading arrangements. This drove several generators into insolvency, and put BE at serious risk of insolvency. Firms with retail activities survived because they were able to use their retail profits to offset their generating losses. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, remarking in one of our debates that British Energy did not have a retail arm to subsidise its generating losses, so it, perforce, had to turn to the Government for support. They were black years for the electricity generating industry. One must remember that although the wholesale price fell, none of this came through to retail domestic customers at all. They paid the subsidy to keep the generators in business.
	The National Audit Office report describes the events that followed British Energy's request for assistance in close detail. It is a straightforward statement of the historical facts, containing very few comments and making no judgments. I can only summarise it in the time available. It describes the terms on which the Government were prepared to lend money to the company, terms which I have described in the past as harsh and unconscionable. The Government insisted on these terms to make available what proved to be temporary loans to cover British Energy's immediate needs. It also involved taking over both the liabilities of British Energy to the Nuclear Liabilities Fund, and the earmarked funds which had been built up by British Energy over the years to meet those liabilities.
	The terms included the transfer from shareholders to creditors of about 87 per cent of the share capital; the issue of new bonds to the creditors; a huge transfer of cash to the Government, the so-called "cash sweep"—65 per cent, year after year, of British Energy's net cash flow; and the forced sale of Bruce Power in Canada and AmerGen in the United States. It is ironic, three or four years later, to see what substantial profits those companies are now making for their buyers. Moreover, there were further restrictions imposed on British Energy by the EU Commission as part of their permission for approving state aid. This mainly took the form of forbidding the company from investing in increased capacity before, I think, 2010.
	In the event, the loans were required for only six months. Wholesale prices began to recover, and have since risen sharply. British Energy is now back in profit. The National Audit Office report describes the effect of this in table 3 on page 5. It compares the effect on the shareholders, the creditors and the Government between September 2002 and February this year. The shareholders lost two-thirds of the value of their shares, from £307 million to £107 million. The creditors, because they took over the bulk of the shares, have gained massively: from £834 million in 2002 to £3.867 billion. The taxpayer, even after assuming the nuclear liabilities as part of the deal, moved from nil in 2002 to nearly £2.5 billion in 2006. The National Audit Office points out, without comment, that the amount of the cash sweep is not calculated to match the potential liabilities, but is intended to secure the maximum contribution by maintaining the viability of the company—paragraph 1.15 of the report. That is a stark statement. The Government screwed the company for as much as they could get, without actually driving it into failure. I recollect the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, roundly declaring to the House, when this was pointed out, that those who seek help from the Government cannot complain about the terms on which that help is forthcoming.
	It does not stop there. The Government have the option of converting the cash sweep into shares. This could effectively give 65 per cent of the enlarged equity to the Government. Noble Lords will recollect that, in the recent Budget announcement, if those shares were now sold it would not help British Energy or the shareholders, but would go to fill the hole in the Chancellor's Budget.
	In the mean time, how has the company itself fared? It generates 20 per cent of UK electricity. It employs some 5,000 people; indeed, in the past two years it has recruited 1,000 new staff. It is investing heavily to improve the reliability of the existing fleet of power stations. Early results include the elimination of what is called the "non-outage backlog" of work on power stations; 40 per cent fewer unplanned shutdowns in 2005–06 compared with the previous year; 60 per cent fewer reportable nuclear events compared to 2003–04; and 60 per cent fewer lost time accidents over that period. As I have said, it is now back in profit; it is running its stations successfully. Yet it remains subject to all the constraints, the restrictions and the cash sweep which were originally imposed as the price of a temporary loan from the Government.
	British Energy is the one British nuclear operator capable of leading the development of a new nuclear programme. As I understand the conditions imposed on it, however, they prevent the company from performing this role. It is noteworthy that every speaker in the 16 February debate recognised that new nuclear build was inevitable; even the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said that it needed to be examined, as I said in my winding-up speech. British Energy has some formidable advantages: its sites offer some of the best locations for any new reactors; it already owns the land; it enjoys excellent relations with its local communities; it is a major employer of local people; it recruits and trains the skilled scientists, engineers and technologists needed for a new nuclear programme; and, of course, its sites already have much of the infrastructure needed for new nuclear build, including full connection to the grid. British Energy knows how to run its plants efficiently and now profitably.

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: My Lords, I am grateful. Can the noble Lord not take the point that the management of British Energy prior to the collapse is a rather different breed from those who are now in control; and that, although there was no question of probity, the previous people were frankly not up to the job of running the business? It was not just the change in the regulatory regime. There were quite spectacular management problems, a number of which the noble Lord has already indicated have been resolved, for which we are grateful.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: I have made it my business to meet both the chairman and the new chief executive of British Energy over the past few months and I am of course enormously impressed by the quality and what they are achieving. There is a company which has turned itself around.
	My time is almost up, but the question I want to put to the Minister is a straightforward one. As the Government consider the outcome of their review and contemplate the possibility—and as many would now argue, the probability—of embarking on new nuclear build, is any consideration being given at all to reviewing the terms that were imposed on British Energy back in the dark days of 2002 so as to allow the company to use the skills of its people, and the assets at its disposal to allow it to contribute to such a programme?
	Given the huge financial returns that have accrued to the Government—far in excess of the amount that they originally lent to the company, as a direct result of the increase in the price of electricity—how can they go on justifying taking 65 per cent of the company's net cash flow simply to swell the Chancellor's coffers? Is it the case that they still contemplate forcing the one major British nuclear generator to compete in the market with both hands firmly tied behind its back?

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I join in thanking my noble friend for again bringing this issue to the attention of your Lordships' House. My noble friend demonstrates great resilience in pursuing this extremely important matter and indeed it is exactly this kind of resilience that this country needs to secure in every aspect of its electricity supply industry. That is going to be the key theme of what I want to talk about today.
	I noted that at its recent meeting in Lisbon, the European Council made a clear connection between foreign policy and energy policy and emphasised that worldwide, energy security has now become strategically as important as defence. We are not discussing an issue that sits on the margins of the national agenda: it is conjunctive to our welfare. The continued provision of cheap energy can no longer be taken for granted and every responsible country has to ensure there is proper resilience in its supply structures. In Britain, our plans should be guided not simply by market forces, but by the national good. There may be some who regret that such matters no longer remain under state control; however most of your Lordships will recall that that system of management was notable neither for its efficiency nor its efficacy. We are where we are, and the paramount task is to provide a strong and clear regulatory system that ensures—in fact, guarantees—resilience within the national energy structure, and specifically within the electricity supply industry.
	I entirely agree with my noble friend as to the importance of a strategic decision mechanism that will provide the required resilience. While the DTI and Ofgem currently regulate the various electricity companies, the question of whether this structure meets national requirements remains debatable. Such maintenance requires both skilled staff and financial capital and whenever cost cuts are required, many companies tend to look first under the maintenance column. This is a matter for concern because inadequate maintenance invariably does not suddenly manifest itself as a problem but is gradually unveiled by an increasing sequence of minor faults. I believe that a national strategic decision mechanism would ensure adequate levels of maintenance.
	It is debatable whether current levels of maintenance are adequate. If asset lives are being stretched and key pieces of equipment are passing their design age, it may be the case that the only thing that will keep them in operation is expert maintenance. Much of the electricity network is reaching the end of its design life of 40 years. This does not mean that the network companies must replace all equipment when it is 40 years old, and it is true that such privatised companies have successfully extended asset lives by an improved understanding of the equipment as well as technological advances and network risks. However, such skilful asset management can only postpone the replacement of equipment for a limited time, and we may be courting serious problems if we fail to learn the lessons of the railway system and allow the condition of the network to deteriorate to a stage where major investment is required in order to ensure effective resilience.
	There are some who maintain that a widespread programme of undergrounding cables is necessary to sustain the reliability of the network. There is no doubt that such a programme would be extremely expensive. There are others who propose more cost-effective policies, such as the use of more highly insulated cables and the effective control of vegetation close to power lines. These are matters that would best be decided by a national strategic decision mechanism, rather than haggling between the DTI, Ofgem and the utility companies.
	In contemplating the resilience of our electricity supply system, the debate is often reduced to a calculation of demand and capacity. The National Grid, in its Winter Outlook Report 2005/06, forecast that peak demand for electricity during this past winter would be 61.9 gigawatts. It also reported that 72.6 gigawatts of capacity would be available. It would be easy to consider these headline statistics and conclude that the plant margins are secure, and that there is adequate resilience within the system. However, such margins can be quickly eroded by rising demand for electricity. The trends are alarming.
	I declare an interest in my capacity as managing director of a web-hosting business in the City where we have recently introduced a new generation of computer blade servers. This new technology brings many benefits to the consumer, but their power and cooling requirements are 15 times that of traditional servers. The same pattern is emerging in electricity consumption in most homes across Britain. Apart from the traditional domestic requirements for water heaters and lighting, consumer products—from televisions to computers—are taking a fast-growing share. Wide-screen televisions and the gadgets attached to them are becoming voracious energy guzzlers. Flat-screen, high definition televisions often use three times more electricity than old tube televisions, and the demand is further increased by the requirements of cable boxes, VCR and DVD players and games consoles. In business and at home, demand is fast rising, putting the electricity supply under increased pressure.
	Again, I suggest that such matters would be best monitored within a strategic decision mechanism. Complacency is dangerous. Ask the citizens of Cape Town, in South Africa. Until recently, the Capetonians took their first world infrastructure and electricity for granted, but no longer. A combination of an unreliable supply system and rising demand has resulted in frequent daily power cuts for the past two months. Last week, the provincial government predicted shortfalls between supply and demand of 400 megawatts during the peak periods in the mornings and evenings. The economic consequences have been extremely serious, and it has highlighted the need for resilience in the system. I am not suggesting that Cape Town today is London tomorrow, but we would be wise to heed the warning.
	Lastly, I would like to touch on where we are most likely to increase our electricity supply to meet this rising demand. Today, approximately 40 per cent of our electricity is provided by gas, a further 33 per cent by coal and 19 per cent by nuclear power and only 4 per cent is generated from renewable sources. An obvious area of sustainable growth must be in renewable sources of energy. Yes, they may be expensive to develop; yes, they require a major shift in thinking; yet, this is the test facing our generation.
	We should not overlook the obvious potential of nuclear energy where many initial concerns over safety have now been allayed. Indeed we should perhaps aspire to the French perspective on nuclear energy where it is commonly regarded not as a five-headed monster, but as a clean, cost-effective and efficient source of energy. I feel it is important that more incentives are given to invest in the development of cheaper, renewable energy. In conclusion, I hope that the Minister in winding up can outline Her Majesty's Government's views on the scope for an integrated strategic decision mechanism, bringing resilience to our electricity supply and acting in the national, not commercial, interest.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, for introducing this debate. I am afraid that I disagree with many of his points, but as I have done so on a number of occasions before, I do not believe he will be surprised. I also apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, but I shall not be converted quite yet on the road to Dounreay towards nuclear energy.
	A number of points have been raised in the debate with which I thoroughly agree. The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, said that we needed one Minister to deal with energy. Currently, there seem to be clashes between the DTI and Defra, ranging over a number of issues, and in future I do not think that energy and carbon dioxide can be separated as they have been in the past. It seems that an almost ideological basis is not one that will lead to a coherent energy policy.
	I shall briefly mention nuclear energy. I have not changed my view that it is an expensive and risky form of energy generation. In the past, it has been expensive and it will continue to be expensive in the future. I fail to see it becoming a cheap alternative. It is risky because, as has been said before, there is no solution to nuclear waste. There are management issues about nuclear waste, but solutions to nuclear waste seem to be some way in the future.
	Nuclear energy is important as it has hit the headlines, with the leader of the Opposition saying in a number of papers that the Conservative Party might look at nuclear power again, even to the point where it might oppose the construction of new nuclear power stations. That is an interesting point. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, does not believe that that will be the case.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I gave way to the noble Lord a moment ago and he has now very kindly given way to me. As I said to the noble Lord yesterday, I suspect that I have had an advantage that he has not had, of discussing this matter with the leader of the Conservative Party, and I am very reassured.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, that is a very interesting question that perhaps the Conservative Front Bench can answer. If the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is reassured that the Conservative Party is still on the route to nuclear power, I question statements that the leader of the Opposition has been making to the press recently indicating that he has doubts about nuclear power.
	This is an important debate because we are at a crossroads on energy policy. Some of the big players in the construction of energy facilities bandy about figures such as £50 billion as regards the reconstruction of plant and infrastructure. If that is the case, I believe that we have a real opportunity—some people see the fact that we will have to rebuild our power systems to meet future demand as a threat—because we have a new route down which to go.
	The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, mentioned renewable power. He said this is an opportunity, as I believe. I take issue with those who are against wind turbines, as does the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill. I find wind turbines an attractive prospect on the landscape. I live in one of the most depopulated areas of England, in Northumberland, and we are about to have 178 wind turbines, some of which are apparently almost 140 metres high. I do not see them as a risk to the landscape; I will see them, but I do not see them as inherently bad to my health. When one goes to some planning meetings, it is interesting to see that many people give the impression that seeing a wind turbine on a hillside is damaging to one's health in the same way as CO2 will be in future or radioactive waste. I find that quite strange.
	We have an opportunity to move down a new course and to look at decentralised power networks. We have had a centralised grid network that relies on very large power stations, and while in the past they have done sterling work, there is no reason to suspect that we cannot change the very fundamental nature through which we deliver power around the country. A major reason for looking at decentralised power systems is because that would save electricity; it would save an enormous amount of power. On looking into the figures, I was quite shocked to realise that some of the primary power stations lose 61.5 per cent of the input energy purely through steam plumes emerging from cooling towers. I realise that that is an inherent difficulty because the heat cannot be used—if it could, I am sure it would be by many of those power stations. It seems to be a very unfortunate loss of such a large amount of power. That heat is equivalent to heating space and water for the entire country.
	The situation does not end there. A further 3.5 per cent of the power generated is then lost through distribution on the high-level voltage grid system and a further 13 per cent is wasted through inefficient end use. That is an interesting statistic, because it shows that an enormous amount of waste can be taken into account when considering further ways of saving energy if we decentralise from those large power stations to areas closer to end use. We are dealing with coal power stations and a centralised grid system that was developed in the 1930s. Although efficiency peaked in the 1970s with the introduction of combined cycle gas turbines, a recent review in 2004 shows that we have not made any significant energy efficiency gains since the 1970s.
	The decentralised energy concept is one that has been championed in a recent report by Greenpeace. I recommend that noble Lords look at that report because it looks at how energy could be generated close to the point of use, using renewable sources or cogeneration. It requires the energy supply system to be restructured to reduce CO2 emissions, cut costs and increase system security without the need for nuclear generation, which is something that I would support wholeheartedly.
	By generating energy close to the point of use, we get better values from the input and therefore dramatically reduce the amount of energy used. This system has been used in a number of European counties, and is a mature technology. Denmark and the Netherlands use this system quite successfully. There are a large number of successes. It has been used in this country. A prime example is the work done in Woking, where private lines have been established and the cost of providing that energy has been worked out as approximately 0.01p per kilowatt hour less than for publicly generated electricity. Together with energy efficiency measures, it has allowed Woking Borough Council to slash its emissions by 77 per cent over the past 15 years. That is a real achievement, and it would be impressive if it could be done in many other boroughs.
	If that is to take place, the Government should take a number of issues forward. One of the major problems with splitting the issue of energy between Defra and the DTI is that it will be difficult to implement changes without one body in charge. One issue is tax incentives to reward householders who and businesses which install decentralised energy technologies. I know many noble Lords believe that this is playing around the edges, but introducing solar thermal heating on people's roofs has a marked effect in reducing the amount of energy used for the production of hot water in their homes. Another issue is that new buildings should be required to incorporate decentralised energy technologies and the current limits on the development of private wires should be removed. That seems a logical step forward if we are to move to a system outside the national grid. There should be area-based CO2 reduction targets. I believe that they are already incorporated in the Climate Change Bill that will be coming to this House shortly. I hope that many noble Lords will look at that Bill, which started in this place last year as a smaller Bill, but is coming back as a much larger Bill and will deserve much debate.
	Electricity suppliers should be required to purchase surplus electricity from domestic power generators at competitive rates. This is not taking place at the moment. I know that there are a number of issues, but I believe that Ofgem has misread its guidelines and sees itself as defending the rights of the major producers of electricity, rather than those of domestic producers. If we are to stimulate the growth of microgeneration in private homes, that has to be tackled head-on. We should also look at the British electricity trading and transmission arrangements because, without a change in those, decentralised power will not go ahead. There are a large number of ways in which we could move away from the national grid towards power generation. One of the great effects of that would be to show local consumers how easy it is to save electricity. When I was looking at generating power from a wind turbine for a property in Northumberland, I found that I would be dealing with a power input a great deal less than that from the national grid and I realised how much power is wasted by inefficient use, such as light bulbs or not realising how much machinery could be switched off on a regular basis.
	This is the route to go down. I know that many noble Lords will say that the only way forward is new nuclear build. That is politically an easy way to go. One would have to persuade people that new nuclear power stations are green, but that seems to be on the agenda. However, a route that would save the same amount of electricity is to make sure that people use much less electricity. It can be done, but it is politically much more difficult.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, for once again initiating this important debate. As history already shows, he was right to raise it last year, and on previous occasions, and he is even more right to raise it now. I am grateful for the opportunity to become the latest recruit to his band of debaters on this thorny issue. It is worth observing that the quality of the debate today is in inverse proportion to the small quantity of speakers.
	The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said in this debate last year—I am sure the Minister will repeat it this year—that ultimate responsibility for security of supply clearly rests with the Secretary of State. He also confirmed that the Government were committed to a market-based approach in ensuring security of energy supply. The Government's energy review will, no doubt, feature in the Minister's response today. In the past two years earlier falls in energy prices have been reversed, and the country has just endured a winter in which security of supplies has been stretched as rarely before. Users have been exposed to dramatic increases in the prices of the main fuels as the United Kingdom's self-sufficiency, in gas production in particular, has declined, exacerbated by the tax regime. Even without a crisis, high energy prices affect the poor disproportionately. While most people, except perhaps the more extreme followers of Milankovitch, agree with the sentiment that has led to efforts to cut carbon emissions, it is unarguable that the effects of cost increases have been exacerbated by the introduction of environmental measures such as the EU emissions trading scheme, the large combustion plant directive, the renewables obligation and the climate change levy. In the context of renewable energy—the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, referred to his concerns on this subject—does the Minister acknowledge that the capacity margin will need to be greater than previously, as the proportion of electricity generated from sources such as wind increases?
	When it comes to security of supply, without strategic long-term decisions involving a range of different technologies and fuels to spread the risk, it is a reasonable bet that nothing will happen until the capacity margin is dangerously low, when the market will deliver a quick-fix solution, inevitably in the form of new gas-fired plant. The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, referred to some of the risks. But even if we accept a degree of reliance on gas, further exposure arises from the effect of inefficiencies in EU energy markets that are not all being liberalised as quickly as our own, as well as delays in the provision of new import infrastructure, particularly because of the time involved in the planning process. This combination of circumstances has heightened uncertainty, especially in forward market prices for fuels. High electricity prices have resulted.
	Most experts agree that by 2020 one-third of our generating capacity must be replaced. Estimates as to the investment required in that generating capacity, even by 2010, are generally well above £2 billion; it may be as high as £9 billion. While there are investors, lack of clarity over policy calls into question whether the investment needed will come, and if it does, whether it is in time and affordable. If we maintain and even increase our reliance on gas, by 2020 we could be importing up to 80 per cent of our gas needs. While plans are in hand to put the physical infrastructure in place with new pipelines and LNG terminals, much of the gas itself must come from markets that either have yet fully to liberalise or which are politically of very doubtful stability. At the same time, significant cuts in CO2 emissions will be needed if we are to achieve our ambitions to tackle climate change.
	Even if the threat from terrorism is overplayed, there are plenty of other risks, not all of which have been properly quantified. Recent well publicised power failures here and overseas are cases in point. Risk is an expected component of business. What energy producers need is a clear policy framework which will enable them to manage that risk as efficiently as possible.
	The Government's attempts at a policy to address these challenges have so far been found wanting. A more effective strategy is needed that provides greater clarity and substance on key questions. The Conservative Party is currently engaged in its own open-minded study of the various challenges facing the shape of the United Kingdom's energy supplies. I am afraid that I shall have to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, because we will have to await its outcome to know the Official Opposition's considered position on nuclear. As well as looking at the environmental aspects, it will also deal with security of supply and will examine the role of government and the part that energy-efficiency measures can play in reducing demand for energy.
	For the country to meet its long-term energy needs, the Government must act now in the following areas. They must work to minimise the regulatory risk which is discouraging investors from investing. The billions of pounds of new investment needed by 2010 must come from investors who are looking for commercial returns. A major deterrent for them is the lack of clarity in the policy framework and the risk of inappropriate government intervention.
	Many noble Lords have spoken about nuclear. While some object to it on grounds of cost and safety, others favour it as a significant source of carbon-free power. The energy White Paper side-stepped the issue of whether nuclear has a future beyond the lifetime of the existing portfolio of stations. While we may not agree on the preferred outcome, we all hope that the Government energy review will not avoid the question again. Of particular concern is that the country has no policy on how producers must deal with higher-level wastes. That is unsatisfactory and must urgently be resolved.
	A further issue is that the framework for the pricing of carbon emissions under the EU emissions trading scheme expires in 2012, which leaves the potential investor in plant which will not come on-stream until the middle of the next decade completely in the dark as to the key economic data, without which he cannot evaluate a project. The Government must encourage an increase in energy research and development investment, including for energy management, intelligent networks and electricity storage. The measures adopted to meet the carbon emissions goals must be cost-effective and intelligently designed. We need to achieve greater energy efficiency.
	Government should work with industry to develop the transmission network and its protection mechanisms to allow more diverse electricity generation, including distributed generation. EU member states are required by various directives to liberalise their energy markets, but in some, political resistance is hindering implementation. In their dealings with the EU, therefore, the Government must prioritise energy market liberalisation. If other EU countries remain behind us, as we rely increasingly on gas imports, we risk facing shortages and continually higher gas and, therefore, electricity prices than our neighbours. Increasing reliance on gas imported from countries such as Russia and Ukraine will risk security of supply more than necessary if EU markets are not liberalised—and quickly.
	The Government must work with industry to assess in more detail the risks to security of supply and to improve emergency planning. My noble friend Lord Jenkin referred to a need for a much more structured framework. The Government must help to make the economy more resilient to price rises by fostering increased efficiency of energy use. They must quickly streamline the process for determining planning applications for energy infrastructure projects and dramatically increasing fuel storage capacity, and must promote stronger research, development and training to develop the engineering skills base for the energy industry.
	Another area which might also be considered is the fact that energy, and electricity in particular, is where the EU could make a major contribution to security of supply through an EU-wide strategy, with greater negotiating power with suppliers as well as a much more diverse potential for renewable supply than any individual country. Given that it would be unwise to rely on the EU doing anything quite as sensible as that, at any rate quickly, our domestic strategy must be coupled with a diplomatic strategy. We are bound to rely more heavily on foreign supplies, both from within and beyond the EU, so we need to promote democracy and the principles of the market economy on an international basis. Poverty remains the single biggest cause of political instability and political instability causes energy insecurity. We must also develop diverse supply networks to reduce reliance on supplies from troubled regions.
	Without taking these steps, we are heading for serious problems, if not disaster. I hope that the Minister will reassure your Lordships that these matters are being dealt with.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I join all noble Lords who have spoken in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, for introducing what we all recognise is a subject of great significance, as he indicated. He has provided us with an annual debate. As I recall, these debates have tended to be in bleak mid-winter, when he has at times perhaps concentrated on the more immediate pressures on supplies. This year, in April, he has perhaps allowed himself the luxury of looking somewhat more long term in the main thrust of his remarks, although I recognise that he is greatly concerned about the margins on which we work in the demand for electricity and its present supply.
	I do not have much that is fresh to say about the broad issues of government policy, not least because I frequently appear at this Dispatch Box to identify and defend our policy and it is inevitable that, given the consistency for which the Government are renowned and because their energy policy has followed clear priorities over a number of years, I am not able to produce a great deal that is new—except to say that all noble Lords will know that the energy review is due to be concluded this summer and we will address the strategic issues that the noble Lord and others referred to. Therefore, it may be that when the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, achieves that success for which he is renowned in the ballot for debates in a few months' time, the Government will be able to be more forthcoming than I can be today.
	That is not to say that we do not think we are on the right course in how we organise energy supplies. I was extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord O'Neill for identifying just how difficult it is to translate into effective action the easy phrase "strategic direction and strategic management". There is no doubt that over the long period for which all energy provision has to be made there are considerable shifts in the market's productive opportunities and challenges, which it can rather glibly be suggested are foreseeable in some form of long-run strategic provision. Frankly, we doubt that that is possible. We think that the experience of recent years is that the market framework guarantees that providers of electricity respond intelligently to the market.
	I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, who emphasised that the maintenance of the network is vital. But I want to reassure him that recent figures from Ofgem show that more than £15.5 billion has been spent on the electricity network between 1991 and 2005. Those figures also show that the network is 99.99 per cent reliable and that outages are down by 16 per cent. That is not a bad record—far from it. It is a very good record against a background of considerable vicissitudes and pressures. I do not doubt that at any point a particular development can cause real problems in electricity supply. We all recognise that. We could predict and provide electricity more effectively if we could create total independence of supply in Britain, although there will always be difficulties with that. We all know that that is a chimera. That is not the world in which we live, so we have to recognise that we will be dependent on sources that can vary. That is why I accept that we will need wider margins in certain areas. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, emphasised that renewables, for example, might need wider margins. I think that is built into the case for renewables. We recognise that we need those features.
	The Government have made it clear—this is a cardinal point of principle, which we stand by—that we will not intervene in the operation of the market except in extreme circumstances and as a last resort to avert a potentially serious risk to safety. We have the confidence of experience when it comes to investing in the market. Let me emphasise that independent energy consultants have estimated that, between 2005 and 2010, around £10 billion will be spent on new gas import and storage infrastructures. Since 1990, £14 billion has been invested in new gas-fired and renewable energy generators, which provide 31 gigawatts of electricity. That is more than 40 per cent of the total generating capacity in Great Britain.
	We have more diverse electricity supplies than ever before. I know that noble Lords will also say that there were pressures on prices last winter. We recognise particular features that have led to that development, and we have identified weaknesses that have emerged in the market in certain areas. That is why very strong representations were made to Europe and to the Commission that the mechanism was not working well enough to guarantee supplies to Britain at a price at which they should have been supplied. We will continue to keep up that pressure. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that Europe has its part to play in the security of energy supplies across the Continent, and Britain is fully entitled to its fair share of those supplies.
	Particular difficulties do occur from time to time. There was a problem last winter with the fire outbreak at the Rough gas storage plant, which caused a reduction. The lights did not go out, although suggestions have been made in similar debates that we were reaching crisis point. Although noble Lords would never be so injudicious as to suggest that the crisis would reach the domestic consumer to quite that extent, grievous forebodings were given, nevertheless. Those forebodings have not come true in each of the past two winters. We have one more winter before our capacity becomes more extensive, but we have margins and I think we can take solace in the fact that some forewarnings have not been justified in the past.
	The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, mentioned British Energy. In general, he appeared to be upbraiding the Government for their hard terms when they supported British Energy. I do not have the slightest doubt that had the British Government expressed that support in very soft terms, he or one or two of his colleagues and friends would have been upbraiding the Government for wasting public resources and not managing the public good in their dealings with British Energy. The Government were obliged to support British Energy in the way in which they did. We had the clear objective of guaranteeing the security of supply, and we have seen the turnaround of British Energy. As the noble Lord said, it is becoming profitable. It is right that the Government should get their proper return for the prompt and proper action which they took. I heard the noble Lord's criticism, but he will recognise that British Energy's contribution to decommissioning liabilities has to be taken into account and that we will want to be fair to the company. But it is also the case that the Government have invested substantial sums in British Energy, and it is only right that they get their proper returns.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, the Minister referred to the fact that British Energy should contribute to the cost of waste and decommissioning. Does he accept that British Energy is now meeting the full cost of decommissioning and of dealing with its waste, that that is built into the present set-up and that there should therefore be no further charge to public funds on that account?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, indeed I do. I am seeking to justify that decision. That is the strategy that the Government have adopted. The noble Lord said that the regime was somewhat tough on British Energy. I recognise that point, but I would justify the regime as properly safeguarding public money.
	The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, presented an argument which other noble Lords subscribe to in rather less precise terms. The idea that our problems could be solved if a department of energy with enhanced powers addressed them, and that all the difficulties lie in relationships within government, is one of the hoariest of the old chestnuts that we have to deal with. Does anyone think that a Secretary of State for Energy in a Liberal government, if one can conceive of such a concept, would deal more easily with a proposal for a wind farm in the Lake District—which would certainly make a significant contribution to renewable energy, but would also create very significant local concerns as well as wider ones, because the Lake District is valued by the whole country—simply because he had both planning and energy powers within his framework? The answer must surely be that you cannot wish away problems of that nature.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I was simply asking about the inherent problems between Defra and the DTI.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the inherent problems between Defra and the DTI on these issues are not problems with the organisation of government; they relate to how one produces renewable energy in circumstances that, as we all know, contain an element of "not in my back yard". That is the case with almost any form of energy production. It is simply wishing things away to suggest that wind farms, green though they may be, do not give rise to these concerns as much as nuclear power plants or other forms of electricity generation do. I am saying merely that putting all the power in the hands of one Minister does not solve the problem.
	The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, rightly identified the issues that we face in the foreseeable future; namely, how we improve and maximise supplies. I have indicated the substantial investment in this area. He will recognise the improvements to interconnectors and the developments in liquid and natural gas terminals and storage. He knows that we are concerned about improving the operation of the market, the pressure that we are bringing on Europe in those terms and the development of EU energy liberalisation. We will, of course, continually address the imperfections in the market.
	The noble Lord was noticeably coy about the Opposition's broad strategic policy on energy. I do not know whether the difference in understanding regarding the view of the Leader of their party between the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, is a reflection of status or who saw whom last and whether that is a factor in this situation. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, perhaps identified in the exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, a rather more substantial commitment to the nuclear option than that which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, was prepared to give this afternoon. It is the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, who sits on the Front Bench and takes responsibility for his party's policy, so we will take the position from him.
	I emphasise that the Government take this debate very seriously. There is no doubt that we live in greatly changed times from the halcyon oil-rich days of the 1980s and 1990s. In the world at present we depend on much more diverse resources. We have to address ourselves to generating energy within our own country on the basis of fresh initiatives and that presents real challenges. I assure the House that we think that the broad issue of energy supply shows that the market is sensitive to opportunities and is prepared to invest.
	The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, identified how an increase in electricity demand could occur and of course he was right. But he will also know that there is sufficient acuity among energy producers to recognise the very factors that he has identified in household consumption of electricity. People will see their way to responding to that demand. However, I accept an important point which the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, uniquely introduced to the debate—that government must also have a policy on energy conservation and the better and more efficient use of energy by households. The Government support that position and are already pursuing strategies, particularly regarding insulation, to encourage households to reduce their consumption of electricity.
	The Government are not about to put the clock back. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, is seeking that by pressing this debate. I understand him to be seeking to identify the very real challenges which face this nation at present and to see whether the Government have an adequate response. The Government have an adequate response and it is not to turn the clock back to some form of control and strategic central direction. I have not seen anything in recent years which identifies how such an approach would be more effective in meeting these challenges. I base part of that on the experience of my noble friend Lord O'Neill and his testimony on the difficulties of prediction in those terms. We can be confident that the Government have a diverse strategy on sources of supply and are concerned to encourage the market to work as well as it possibly can with regard to those opportunities. On the basis of past experience we are confident that a strategic decision-making mechanism would not add anything to that position. In fact, it could deter investors who might get the wrong signals from a strategic position that is possibly misconceived. We are confident that we are seeing investment in the crucial areas of energy supply.
	On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, will feel reassured that the Government already have in hand significant policies in this area. But it is important that in the review, on which we will pronounce in the middle of this year, the future projections on generation will become even clearer.

Lord Tombs: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. It is not my task to summarise the discussion, but I congratulate noble Lords who have taken part on the standard of discussion. It has been an excellent debate. The absence of old friends has been offset very thoroughly by the acquisition of new faces, who I hope we shall see again. I shall deal with two topics relating to what I tried to demonstrate in my opening remarks.
	The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, seemed to be rather sceptical about the possibility of long-term planning when there are unforeseen circumstances which are likely to occur. That is precisely why one has to have long-term planning. It is not a rigid plan; it provides flexibility or "resilience", to use my noble friend's phrase, or "diversity", to use another phrase. This is an area where the market is singularly ill-equipped to operate. Providing diversity means doing what is not in every respect the most attractive thing today. You are paying an insurance policy, and the market does not generally like that point of view. It likes short-term rewards.
	The Minister said that he hoped that I was convinced that the Government have demonstrated a strategy. His natural optimism overcame him because anything further from the truth I find difficult to imagine. The Government are immersed in short-term considerations and single-factor solutions, both of which are the roads to very deep trouble.
	The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred to the BE rescue. It was an outrageous so-called rescue, made more so by the fact that—your Lordships may care to look up an earlier Audit Commission report at the time of the British Energy difficulty—the Audit Commission did not make a judgment. It never makes a judgment. But it pointed out that the DTI had failed to consider the effect of NETA on British Energy and other generators, and failed to consult them on the effects of doing it. That comes back to what I have said before: the rescue was from a crisis of the Government's own making, which makes the whole solution even more outrageous. I do not know whether it is possible—it might be possible in another place—for the whole issue to be looked at by a Select Committee, which would be very valuable.
	Finally, my renewed thanks to everyone who has taken part today. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill [HL]

Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House in Committee accordingly.
	[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Haskel) in the Chair.]
	Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
	Clause 4 [Amendment of Scotland Act 1998]:

Lord Tanlaw: moved Amendment No. 1:
	Page 1, line 18, leave out "decision of whether to bring into force in Scotland" and insert "subject-matter of"

Lord Tanlaw: In speaking to Amendment No. 1, I shall speak also to Amendments No. 2 and 5. They are basically technical amendments suggested by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that has reported on the Bill. I shall roughly summarise paragraph 18 of its 12th Report of this Session, which will give the reasons. It states:
	"The commencement power in Scotland and Northern Ireland (when the Assembly is not suspended) is given not to the Scottish Ministers or a Northern Ireland Department but to the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly themselves, bodies charged with making primary legislation of their own within devolved areas".
	This is a novel provision and reflects the fact brought out in the Explanatory Notes that whether the provisions will be brought into force at all for Scotland and Northern Ireland is something on which the policy decision is expected to be taken by the relevant national parliament or assembly.
	In accordance with the usual constitutional arrangements, leaving the policy decision on an experimental period to them could be achieved by ensuring without doing any more that the subject matter of the Bill is a devolved matter. So far as the committee is aware, it would be unprecedented for the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly to be given powers to commence an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament, which is why it is drawing attention to the amendments. So even though this is creating a precedent, it does not make it impossible; above all, it makes it workable for the devolved assemblies to make their own decisions on whether they wish to take part in the experiment and when they wish to take part in the experiment covered under the Bill. I beg to move.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: It falls to me to set out the Government's position on the amendments. Noble Lords will be aware of the history of the issue, which was reviewed by my noble friend Lord Sainsbury at Second Reading last month. He outlined on that occasion why the Government see no reason to change the existing arrangements, which we consider to be a satisfactory compromise between those who prefer lighter mornings and those who prefer lighter evenings. Recent informal discussion with stakeholders representing both business and workers shows no strong desire to change, with some being strongly opposed to change. I do not propose to repeat in detail or revisit what was said at Second Reading other than to stress that the Government have strong reservations about the Bill.
	Notwithstanding those reservations, convention dictates that the Government will treat the Bill in a neutral way when any voting is involved in your Lordships' House, and that will be our approach. The effect of the amendments would to be to cause the Bill to be applicable only to England and Wales, leaving Scotland and Northern Ireland to make whatever arrangements if any deemed appropriate in light of the Bill. The amendment to Clause 4 is a response to the comments of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which expressed the view as has been explained by the noble Lord that devolving powers to bodies charged with making primary legislation is better achieved by ensuring that the Bill's subject matter is a devolved matter rather than just the decision of whether and when to bring a provision into force.
	We accept that the amendment achieves that end, but the subject matter of the Bill should remain a reserved, not a devolved matter. These are already devolved matters for Northern Ireland. The amendments preserve the prospect of all or any of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales not participating in the experiment or participating over a different period with the possibility therefore of different parts of the UK being in different time zones. Should such an outcome arise, clearly difficulties would ensue, and there would undoubtedly be a significant level of inconvenience and disruption over a range of areas. We will discuss that matter shortly in relation to another amendment. There is an additional complication for Northern Ireland: if it changed to allying with England, it would cease to be in the same time zone as the Republic of Ireland. In summary, these amendments do not give the Government any greater comfort on the Bill.

On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
	Clause 5 [Short title, commencement and extent]:

Lord Monson: moved Amendment No. 1A:
	Page 2, line 4, leave out "2006" and insert "2008"

Lord Monson: As I argued on Second Reading, if there are enough people in this country who want to sacrifice lighter mornings in favour of lighter evenings, in most cases there is nothing to stop them collectively in conjunction with employers, if they are employed—if they are self-employed they do not need to consult anyone—deciding to rearrange their working day so as to start work earlier and finish work earlier so as to give them more hours of daylight after they finish work, as most people on the Continent of Europe already do and have done for many years.
	There is no cultural imperative that decrees that the British should start and finish work up to an hour later than most other nationalities; it is simply a convention and conventions can be modified. It is surely far better to try to alter the hours of work on a voluntary basis for those who want to do so for two years or so, rather than switching Wolverhampton and Weston-super-Mare into the same time zone as Warsaw, where the sun rises approximately one and a half hours earlier than it does here. This amendment would give more time for people to experiment, for those who want to—it would of course have to be done collectively—with modest alterations to their working hours. If successful, the Bill's provisions would never need to be brought into force and a suitable amendment would have to be introduced on Report to provide for that possibility. I beg to move.

Lord Jopling: The noble Lord's amendment is in many ways similar to my Amendment No. 3. All I will say at this stage is that I am particularly keen in a few moments to move Amendment No. 4, which is extremely important. I certainly support what the noble Lord said in moving the amendment. If we are to have this experiment, I would much prefer that it was for one year rather than three years, but I will come to that in a few moments.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: I repeat that this amendment also does not give us any greater comfort on the Bill. I add that there is nothing at the moment to stop people experimenting with changed working arrangements and it does not require the Bill to facilitate that.

Lord Tanlaw: I also do not feel happy with the amendment. It may be worth saying that I have been advised by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents that it takes at least three years to accumulate data to find out which is the better—lighter evenings or lighter mornings. This is the reason why the full period of three years has been mentioned, which I will certainly wish to stick to.

Lord Monson: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for his support. I see the merits in his amendments. It is better to try the voluntary route first rather than rushing into the compulsory one, as my noble friend Lord Tanlaw proposes. However, this is not my preferred amendment: I shall return to the matter in a moment. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Tanlaw: moved Amendment No. 2:
	Page 2, line 7, leave out paragraphs (c) and (d).
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	[Amendment No. 3 not moved.]

Lord Jopling: moved Amendment No. 4:
	Page 2, line 13, at end insert—
	"( ) This Act shall come into force only if a commencement date has been appointed in all of the cases in paragraphs (a) to (d) of subsection (2)."

Lord Jopling: I apologise to the Committee that I was not able to be here for Second Reading. If I had been here I would have expressed my opposition to the reintroduction after more than 30 years of this experiment. I feel a sense of déjà vu because on 2 December 1970, after trying out British Standard Time for a number of years—virtually the same arrangement as that proposed by the noble Lord in his Bill—a debate was held in the other place to decide whether to continue. I think I am right to say that I am the only person still in either House of Parliament who spoke in that debate. I should say in passing that I am only just the only person because my great friend both in this House and from the other place, Lord Gray of Contin, made his maiden speech on that occasion. He expressed his opposition to any continuation of the experiment. All noble Lords will remember the result of that debate. The trial of British Standard Time was thrown out by Members of the other place on a free vote of 361 to 81. One could hardly have had a firmer view on whether the experiment was a good or a bad thing.

Lord Tanlaw: I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He is quite right, but he has failed to mention what was an emotional charge to that debate, owing to a tragic accident where a school bus ran over a crocodile of school children in Stornoway. That was the main reason for the objection to darker mornings. Every Member felt that something had to be done. It was rather like the dog biting Bill; in my view it was something done on the spur of the moment.

Lord Jopling: All I can say to the noble Lord is that that is not my recollection. All Members of the House had received a torrent of letters from people giving reasons quite different from the road safety aspect. I agree that that was a part of it, but it is my strong recollection that it was only a minor concern at the time. If any noble Lord wants to read the debate, I have a copy of that Hansard with me. One can see that many other reasons were put forward on that occasion for voting to throw out British Standard Time.
	I ask myself this: what, since 1970, has changed? Aside from some very minor adjustments, nothing much has changed. In general terms, the position is exactly as it was. If we were to embark on the noble Lord's experiment, there would be a similar torrent of objection to it. I recall getting a great deal of kudos in my constituency in the Lake District for speaking up on behalf of the large number of my constituents who had told me what a ghastly experiment it was. If we were to return to it, I am sure that it would be equally unpopular.
	During the experiment, for 67 days between 26 November and 1 February in my own Lake District constituency, the sun would not rise until after nine o'clock in the morning. The constituency lay in a direct line about half way between Land's End and John O'Groats. I recall that my old friend the late Lord Callaghan tried to make out that it was a Scottish issue. It was nothing of the sort, rather it was very much a matter which offended people in both England and Wales. The experiment caused great irritation to farmers. I recall quoting the case of a farmer in my constituency who wrote to me saying that he had to get up to milk his cows at six o'clock in the morning in order to catch the milk lorry. Having done that, he then had to sit on his bottom and wait until nine o'clock before he could go out on to the fell to look after his sheep because it would not get light until then. Small builders showed how much money they were losing because they were not able to start work at the usual time. A number of parents also complained about having to take their children to school in the dark. Opposition to the experiment ranged far wider than just in Scotland.
	In terms of legislation, I know that this Bill has no future whatever. I should say with what I suppose is a certain amount of shame that in another role when in another place, I was responsible for killing as many Private Members' Bills as most people you will ever meet. The truth is that the Bill has no future. But before we go any further, I turn to my amendment. I realise that this amendment, which I drafted myself, may have technical imperfections, but that is often the fate of homemade amendments. As the Bill stands, we could have different time zones within the United Kingdom. The Minister referred to this in his helpful opening remarks in response to our first debate. By passing a Bill of this sort, the United Kingdom Parliament could opt for the experiment, but as we have heard, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could refuse to join in. The Bill would apply to those areas only if they decide to participate. Frankly, I think that that would lead us into an absurd situation.
	We speak of the United Kingdom when we refer to these tiny islands. What could be more ridiculous than having different time zones in the United Kingdom? I accept that this may be open to argument, but so far as I know we would be the only country in the European Union with different time zones. Of course we accept different time zones within the European Union itself, but I cannot think of any country which has two time zones within the state.

Lord Tanlaw: I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Portugal and Spain have different time zones.

Lord Jopling: That is not exactly what I said. I said that I could not think of a state within the European Union where different zones are used within that state. We understand the necessity for different time zones in Russia and the United States, but to have different time zones in the United Kingdom seems a total absurdity.
	In the debate following the previous identical experiment, virtually no support was expressed for the scheme in Scotland. I have looked through the Division lists for the vote following that debate in December 1970, and while I may be wrong, the only Welsh MPs I can find who voted in favour of British Standard Time were the somewhat unlikely duo of George Thomas and Jim Callaghan. They had their differences of one sort or another, but on that occasion they came together. However, I could not detect any other Welsh MPs within the 81 who wanted the experiment to continue.
	I do not oppose this Bill for the same reasons that I know some people might do so; that is, that it would move us to European time. I have never been a Euro-sceptic, but I am a Unionist. The unity of the United Kingdom has been weakened over recent years; we all accept that. To pass legislation which would open the door to further disunity would, in my view, be an act of folly. I agree with what the Minister said when he talked about the complications of moving to more than one time zone in the United Kingdom.
	My Amendment No. 4 would mean that if we were to embark on this experiment—I hope we will not—it should be done only when all four partners in the United Kingdom had agreed to go in together so that we would avoid different time zones within the United Kingdom. To put my amendment concisely, it is all in or all out. Otherwise I believe that the Bill is a recipe for confusion, disunity and muddle. I beg to move.

Lord De Mauley: I would be concerned if this Bill were passed without a major conundrum being resolved. On the one hand, if Scotland were to join England in advancing its clocks by one hour, it would mean that those at the western and northern extremes would spend a considerable part of the first half of each winter's day in darkness. On the other hand, if Scotland were able to opt out, it would introduce between Scotland and England all the inconveniences that the change had been intended to remove between England and the continental mainland. Assuming Northern Ireland followed England, it too would have a similar problem in its dealings with Eire. This amendment seeks to resolve that conundrum, at least as regards the United Kingdom. We would also need to ensure that the dates on which the Bill came into force in each country coincided.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: I, too, support this amendment. It would be ridiculous and inconvenient to have different time zones between England and Scotland or any other parts of the United Kingdom. As one who lived in the north of Scotland, in north-east Aberdeenshire, through the experimental period back in the 1970s, I can confirm what the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, has just said. It was quite intolerable; I was driving my children to school in the dark and picking them up again in the dark, because we had such a short period of daylight in the middle of winter. You will never get the Scots, and certainly not the northern Scots, to agree to the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, proposes. I strongly support the amendment.

Lord Addington: I will briefly make a comment here. I initially said at Second Reading that the real problem is the fact that geography dictates that you only have X amount of light hours in the day, and it is merely a matter of how we use them. I also pointed out at that time, in agreeing with the noble Lord, that it would be slightly absurd if you happened to be somewhere with a frequently crossed border. For example, I live in Berkshire but buy my milk in Wiltshire. If there is a difference in time zone, it is going to cause considerable inconvenience.
	My gut reaction on this is that constituents can twists arms on it. Letting them deal with it in the other end of the building would be my preferred option for the simple reason that a great deal of conjecture goes on here. One of our strengths on most issues is that we do not get squeezed that hard or that readily on various issues. I suggest that it is more appropriate that those in another place deal with this issue if this Bill has any future.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: The thrust of Amendment No. 4 is to seek to ensure that the experiment would take place only if each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set a date for participation, and one which would have to be before 25 October 2009, when the Act would expire. As the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, acknowledged, the wording of Amendment No. 4 would need to be changed if it is to be pursued, as the Bill already provides a date for Clause 5(2)(b). I was interested to hear the experience of the noble Lord in the earlier experiment of 1968–71. Since then there has been the 1989 Green Paper which showed a divergence of opinion on the issue, and the debate in 1996 on a Private Member's Bill equally showed that those divisions were still there, with strong views on either side.
	A number of noble Lords have referred to the practical issues. Just think of living in one place and working in another, or having children going to school in two different locations and two different time zones, or business establishments in two different time zones, or living in one location with caring responsibilities in another. These are just some of the practical implications that would—

Lord Tanlaw: I thank the noble Lord for giving way. How on earth can children go from England to Scotland? How many schools go from England to Scotland in the course of a day to check their watches? I would be interested to know. The noble Lord makes it sound as though this happens right across the whole country. Can he give me any number for schools where the children live on the other side of the border?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: I cannot quote any practical examples off the cuff, but we are not talking only about the border with Scotland. If the Bill proceeds as the noble Lord wishes, then you could have different time zones with Wales as well. It is quite possible to envisage these circumstances where, because of the lack of a difference in time zones at the moment, people have entered into arrangements— sometimes on a long-term basis—which do not recognise the practicalities that could arise. It is right to take these into account.
	I should stress that the removal of the prospect of different parts of the UK being in different time zones does not change our opposition to this measure, although clearly it would address an area of concern.

Lord Tanlaw: It was a delight and a blast from the past to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and to hear the bedrock of laissez-faire set out in the way that looked after the Conservative Party not for one century but for two. It is obviously still alive and well.
	This morning, Dr Stephen Ladyman—in Standing Committee A on the Road Safety Bill—said that lighter evenings would save a hundred lives every year. No one has mentioned this. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has set this out, the RAC Foundation has written to me—

Lord McKenzie of Luton: If the noble Lord will gave way, I thought I said at the start of dealing with first amendment that I did not propose to revisit every issue discussed at Second Reading. That issue was touched upon at Second Reading by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Sainsbury.

Lord Tanlaw: I think this was the first time it had been mentioned in the other place by a Minister; that is what I was told. The RAC Foundation has set out, after much consideration, a letter to me in support of this Bill. The AA Trust has sent a similar letter, also in support. The Local Authority Road Safety Officers' Association, the Institute of Road Safety Officers, GEM Motoring Assist—formerly the Guild of Experienced Motorists—and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety all support this Bill for the simple reason that it saves lives. This was one of the primary points.
	The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, mentioned his former constituents and said that they were absolutely adamant against the Bill. How is that schools such as Burton Morewood School, Jericho Primary School in Whitehaven, the Cumbrian Education Authority, and Gillside Primary Training School wrote me unsolicited letters fully supporting this Bill, saying that the children would really benefit from taking some exercise after school? This also confirms the report by Mayer Hillman, the senior fellow from the Policy Studies Institute, who made the same point.
	Listening to people here today it appears that absolutely nobody is in support of this Bill. I think they are completely wrong. I can have my views, but the point of my Bill is to create an experiment where the ideas, the statistics and so on that have been put forward in this House can be proved right or wrong. I have taken a neutral position on this issue; the only position I have taken is the need for a new experiment. The Mayor of London has also written to say that sport, leisure and tourism would benefit from the Bill. On farmers, the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, says he was the Minister of Agriculture—I am sure a good one at that time—but no farmer worth his salt wears his watch to work. The development officers of the Crofting Commission in the north of Scotland, to take the view of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, are in favour of this Bill. They see clock time as having no relation to farmers' time. Anyone who pretends to be a farmer and says that clock time is important to farming is not a good farmer in my view. He is not a farmer at all.
	I have had an extraordinary number of letters regarding seasonal affective disorder, known as SAD. A huge number of people suffer from SAD—3 million, according to the association. It has expressed interest in and support for my Bill.
	We have just had a debate on energy. Yet how is it that no one has mentioned the American or the New Zealand experience, of switching to daylight saving time? In New Zealand, there is a saving of 3.5 per cent of the total energy. The US Department of Transportation says daylight saving trims the entire country's electricity usage by 1 per cent per day. The Government are about to produce an energy review. Will daylight saving come into this as part of it? I sincerely hope so, and I hope that it has been thought out.
	The timing put forward in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, is already covered. The devolved governments and assemblies can choose the time when to start the experiment or to opt out of it. Whatever people say, I do not think it would be the end of the world if the Scottish Nationalists took over the Scottish Parliament and decided to have a time of their own. I do not see it as a big problem. People cross from Spain into Portugal without any problems with the time. It does not affect the economy or tourism. Millions of people—1.5 million a year—cross these borders. Why should it be a problem here? Everyone changes their watches when they go on holiday. Are noble Lords saying that that is difficult or impossible? In fact, if my Bill becomes law, they will not have to change their watches when they go to the Continent .
	I cannot accept the noble Lord's amendment and I leave it there.

Lord Jopling: In view of what has been said, and particularly in view of the helpful remarks of the Minister, pointing out that there may be technical errors in my amendment, I think it would be best at this stage if I were to withdraw the amendment. We can come back to it later. But, dare I say it, I think the noble Lord has had a good run for his money at both Second Reading and today. This Bill has no future and the most helpful thing he could do would be to withdraw the Bill, as I ask leave to withdraw the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 5 not moved.]
	Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
	In the Title:

Lord Monson: It was suggested to me before Easter by a very senior Member of your Lordships' House that the present Short Title is seriously misleading, and of course he is right. Bearing in mind that we are constantly and rightly reminded these days of the desirability of shunning spin in favour of transparency, I feel strongly that the Title ought to be changed to the Lighter Evenings and Darker Mornings (Experiment) Bill, so that nobody should remain unaware of its implications.
	The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, may argue that we in this House know full well that lighter evenings mean darker mornings, and indeed nearly all readers of what we used to call the broadsheets are equally aware of this. However, I do not think it is patronising to suggest that many readers of what we still call the red tops, and even more so, those who hardly read anything at all, may not be quite so observant. A public opinion poll to gauge support for the Bill under its current Title might produce a much more favourable and enthusiastic result than if the Title were changed in a manner I suggested.
	The Public Bill Office told me yesterday that it was considered undesirable for any opponent of a Bill to try to force through a change of Short Title without the consent of the sponsor, and accordingly I did not table the amendment I was intending to table. However, I hope that my noble friend Lord Tanlaw might consider the desirability of being entirely open about the implications of the Title and alter the Title accordingly at the next stage. It is up to him what he decides to do.

Lord Tanlaw: My noble friend has a very good and interesting point. I left out the dark morning side because I thought it was not necessary. I am quite happy to put it back. The one thing I was not prepared to take out was "experiment". In fact I used it for a reason, and possibly some noble Lords may not know the definition of "experiment", as put forward by Roger Bacon. He was a Franciscan friar who taught at Oxford some 800 years ago. He said, in his Opus Maius:
	"Without experiment, nothing can be adequately known. An argument proves theoretically, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt; nor will a mind repose in the clear view of truth, unless it finds it by way of experiment".
	That is the point of this Bill, and I am very glad for both noble Lords who put forward their amendments that they emphasised the experiment. This is an experiment and we cannot know the answer to it. In spite of what the Government Benches may say, they cannot know the answer to it unless we have experienced lighter evenings.

Title agreed to.
	House resumed. Bill reported with amendments.

Education: Science and Technology

Baroness Greenfield: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what account they are taking of the impact of fast-moving advances in science and technology on how young people think and learn in planning future education policy.
	My Lords, the 21st century is offering society an unprecedented raft of challenges. All at once science is now delivering a diverse range of information technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology, with a speed and convergence that we could never have predicted even a decade ago.
	For example, one recent survey of eight to 18 year-olds claimed that children were now spending on average 6.5 hours a day using electronic media. Most recently, the trend to multi-tasking—that is, using one or more devices in parallel—amounted to an effective 8.5 hours a day. Could this screen and multimedia culture impact on thinking and learning? The journalist Kevin Kelly summed up the issue very well:
	"Screen culture is a world of constant flux, of endless sound bites, quick cuts and half-baked ideas. It is a flow of gossip tidbits, news headlines and floating first impressions. Notions don't stand alone but are massively interlinked to everything else; truth is not delivered by authors and authorities but is assembled by the audience".
	When we of the 20th century read a book, most usually the author takes you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative series of interconnected steps. It may not be a journey with which you agree or that you enjoy, but none the less as you turn the pages one train of thought succeeds the last in a logical fashion.
	We can then of course compare one narrative with another. In so doing we start to build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys, which in turn will influence our individualised framework. One might argue that this is the basis of education—education as we know it. It is the building up of a personalised conceptual framework, where we can relate incoming information to what we know already. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance. Traditional education has enabled us, if you like, to turn information into knowledge.
	Now imagine that there is no robust conceptual framework. Imagine that you are sitting in front of a multimedia presentation where you are unable, because you have not had the experience of many different intellectual journeys, to evaluate what is flashing up on the screen. The most immediate reaction instead would be to place a premium on the most obvious feature, the immediate sensory content—we could call it the "yuk" or "wow" factor. You would be having an experience rather than learning. Here sounds and sights of a fast-paced, fast-moving, multimedia presentation would displace any time for reflection or any idiosyncratic or imaginative connections that we might make as we turn the pages and then stare at the wall to reflect.
	Navigation on the internet is wonderful if you have a conceptual framework in which to embed the responses that flash up. We should not assume that all children nowadays will be so well equipped. The UK Children Go Online investigation by Sonia Livingstone at the London School of Economics found that 92 per cent of nine to 19 year-olds have accessed the internet from a computer at home or at school, but 30 per cent have received no lessons at all on using the internet. Only 33 per cent of regular users of the internet have been taught how to judge the reliability of online information. We now have access to unlimited and up-to-date information at the touch of a button, but in this new, answer-rich world surely we must ensure that we are able to pose appropriate, meaningful questions.
	Does this mean that young people are acquiring different skills? According to the National Literacy Trust, who I would like to thank for their help, there is currently no conclusive evidence that reading standards are deteriorating. On the other hand, there is evidence that the enjoyment of reading has declined in the last five to 10 years. Also, children perhaps have more interests competing for their time. They may be spending a lot less time just playing or doing nothing. Of course, doing nothing would presumably include thinking and letting your imagination roam free.
	The Literacy Trust pointed out that reading from the screen was just as legitimate as reading from a book, but we might ask how long this trend will continue. Already the visual icon is often substituting for the written word. Soon the spoken word will be increasingly available. If we soon have voice-interface computers—such computers are in the near future—embedded in our clothing or personal effects, you might simply need to ask your watch for the date of the Battle of Hastings.
	Memory, for example, may no longer be as essential as it was for those of us who had to remember such dates or had to learn reams of Latin grammar. Along with the ability to read and the need to remember, surely we are at risk of losing our imagination, that mysterious and special cognitive achievement that until now has always made the book so very much better than the film. If one is always working with directory trees, where menus are offered with fixed numbers of options—where to get to another action one has to plod up and down various branch-lines of thinking—would that not impose itself on how we think in general?
	In this regard, Futurelab—until recently part of NESTA, but now an independent charity based in Bristol—is doing some excellent work. The new organisation is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and aims to incubate new ideas from the lab into the classroom, offer hard evidence and practical advice, support the design and use of innovative learning tools, communicate the latest thinking and practice in education IT, and provide space for experimentation and exchange of ideas between creative technology and education sectors.
	Perhaps Her Majesty's Government should be not only harnessing but amplifying the work of Futurelab by placing it in the wider landscape of a society already under the powerful and unprecedented influences of electronic multimedia. In particular we need a meta-analysis that is nationwide, one of shifting trends in the whole portfolio of learning and thinking skills. I am sure that many parents and grandparents would welcome hard statistics on critical factors such as hours spent in front of a screen, critical age ranges, mitigating influences of other activities, and above all what abilities such as creativity may now be lost and what may now be gained with this new way of processing information compared to those of us educated in the last century. Perhaps the increase in prevalence of hyperactivity might be explained by sustained exposure to an unsupervised IT environment where only short attention spans were ever needed and where the child had no way of practising long periods of paying attention. That is a speculative idea but one that I think should at least be tested.
	I am not proposing that we become IT Luddites but rather that we could be stumbling into a powerful technology, the impact of which we understand poorly at the moment. The new technologies are also convergent, embracing not only screen culture but drug culture. A recent excellent summary has been published by Demos entitled Better Humans, which surveys the issue of performance enhancement by invasive procedures such as, most immediately, drugs. Already there were reports last weekend of an alarming increase in the use of Prozac, a mood enhancer. Ritalin, for enhancing concentration, and Pro-vigil, for extending alert wakefulness, are also drugs that are currently medicating the classroom.
	The problem with these drugs is that they do not target a single trait such as mood or concentration or wakefulness, not least because we do not yet understand as neuroscientists how such functions are generated as a cohesive operation in the brain: rather, drugs will manipulate, in a very broad spectrum way, the chemicals—the so-called transmitters—in the brain that, in turn, could have both widespread and also long-lasting effects. This area has already been the subject of some admirable studies within Foresight's drugs futures programme, at the OST within the DTI. The subject includes so called cognition enhancers—currently much debated in relation to being prescribed for attention deficit disorder. In a similar fashion the much discussed abuse of proscribed drugs—in particular, cannabis—is highly controversial. A central issue in the debate this afternoon is not whether cannabis, compared to other drugs, is less lethal, nor even that it could trigger a predisposition to schizophrenia and depression, but rather that it might well change attention spans and cognitive abilities without that ever becoming apparent as a medical problem.
	The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to any and every event: we cannot complacently take it as an article of faith that it will remain inviolate, and that consequently human nature and ways of learning and thinking will remain constant. A new idea is that there is room for improvement: so-called transhumanism, described by Professor Fugiama, a professor of international politics, as,
	"the world's most dangerous idea",
	promotes the ability of science and technology to go beyond the authority and the norm—whatever that is—for physical and mental human enhancement. The idea of enhancement is sinister in whatever way it would be applied. If, in the unlikely event that everyone could be improved to the same extent, we would end up in a monotonously homogenous world predicated on the assumption that each of us was naturally inadequate. Worse still, and more likely, would be the scenario where only a minority were so "favoured"—a sector of society of techno haves increasingly divergent from the techno have-nots.
	We must surely choose to adopt technology that will ensure that the classroom will fit the child, and buck the growing trend for technology to be used to make the 21st-century child fit the classroom. The educational needs of the individual are changing and the very nature of the classroom needs to change too. Initiatives such as the Foresight programme have already made significant impact on our thinking about the future of a number of issues in society. Perhaps Her Majesty's Government might consider a similar in-depth project to explore the future of learning and education.
	Initiatives such as the Economic and Social Research Council-funded seminar series, Collaborative Frameworks in Neuroscience and Education, have been a catalyst for bringing together neuroscientists and educators to help us start to understand learning and create an evidence base on which 21st-century education can be built. But now is the time to ensure public engagement in the process. We shall need to consider how 21st-century technology can help to deliver a 21st-century education system. We need to do that not by turning the clock back and picking off small or specific projects, but by co-ordinating on a nationwide scale within both the public and private sectors the best of science and technology initiatives.
	Many admirable projects are in train but the public need to know about them, and they need to know about each other. One such, our own Institute for the Future of the Mind at the James Martin School in Oxford, is asking four questions. What are the influences on children today? Where is the actual evidence of a new type of impact? What do children need to learn? And, most importantly, how do we deliver these desiderata? No one independent institution or organisation, and no one single project, can take on such a challenge. We turn to Her Majesty's Government to spearhead a large-scale public debate, thereby ensuring that British citizens of the mid-21st century have the most fulfilling lives possible, in the most successful society possible.

Lord Stone of Blackheath: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, for raising the issue of science once again in this House. Last time I said that I was not really qualified to speak because I was not a scientist; indeed, I left school in disgrace at the age of 16 with only five O-levels—one of them in woodwork—and I thought myself dim. Since then I have found a useful trait in my character. In school it was vilified, I was criticised for it throughout the first half of my life, and I only recently realised its benefits. That trait is to enjoy and embrace risk and, in doing so, to be creative.
	Being creative does not make me special: it is normal. In a 1999 report, the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education—on which the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, and myself served, together with a great team that included Jude Kelly, Dawn French and the artist Helen Storey—said:
	"In our view, creativity is possible in all areas of human activity and all . . . people . . . have creative capacities. Developing these capacities involves a balance between teaching skills and understanding, and promoting the freedom to innovate, and take risks".
	Risk is what I want to talk about within this debate. Rarely given a good review and always seen as bad, risk is not just negative. It is a balancing of potential outcomes, both positive and negative. Last September, Sir Paul Judge, in a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, of which he is chair, said:
	"Life is safer than it ever has been, but we seem less prepared to accept risk in anything we do. We need to make sensible decisions about what really is dangerous, formed on the basis of weighing up the facts, rather than on public hysteria. By making everything appear life-threatening, we are in danger of crying wolf once too often".
	Sir Paul is so right. When people who profit from panic and chaos play on people's fears and insecurities it is damaging to our society. Much of the media is culpable.
	There are legitimate ways of creating enterprise, building businesses and managing risk, but the current trend for interested parties to exaggerate risk and fan hysteria is having a long-term detrimental effect on our society. Misunderstanding risk can affect all fields: business, politics, medicine, the arts, media, sport, and of course technology and science. Science, in particular, is dependent on exploring the unknown and seeking to go beyond the boundaries of existing knowledge. Curiosity and risk go hand in hand. Developing science and technology curricula therefore needs to protect people's ability to seek answers using their creative instincts, unfettered by the confines of excessively risk-averse teaching methods.
	In their future lives all students in any field of activity will find that risk-taking increases the probability that one will find something of value, despite the research costs. It creates the possibility of large gains in experience, capacity and knowledge. Those who do not take risks cannot expect these benefits. It is the same in artistic endeavour. Historically, thousands of artists have taken risks in exploring their medium. The architect, the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, said in Where Art and Science Come Together:
	"Creativity and arts are troubled by aversion to uncertainty".
	This is not true of only science and art. In my experience, risk-taking is an element in all people's happiness. People who initially tried to eliminate risk from their businesses, careers or pursuits—and were, at first, lauded for their safe and sensible approach—ultimately found that they had achieved less than they could or should have. They disappoint themselves, their partners and their colleagues and, in the long run, become sad, even depressed, though usually too late to change. Those who take considered risks are vital and vibrant, and often gain much from being bold. Risk is a part of our world, an element in creative success and an essential ingredient in enterprise and happiness. More and better science education, as promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, is necessary not only for future scientists and technologists, but for everybody. Whether one enjoys taking risks or prefers to avoid them, we would do well to understand the concept of risk from an early age.
	This can be taught through the sciences, but as Daniel Barenboim has been saying all this week about music and non-musicians, scientific thinking is important to all, including those who will not become scientists. How young people are helped to think about these issues will affect their well-being and the part that they play in society. It is vital that these points are considered in their education and in science teaching. Balancing risk must be part of the package. That means that we should learn something of numbers, probability, uncertainties, chaos, mechanics and even some of the newer quantum mechanics, or we will become risk-averse and waste our lives hiding from it.
	In the end, education is about empowering young people to take control of their lives by encouraging them to take increasing responsibility for their actions. Exploring new ideas and places is a vital part of any child's development, and risk is an integral part of that. Realising one's potential involves going into the unknown and trying to accomplish things for which there is no guaranteed success. Exploring new horizons provides exposure to new experiences, which expands knowledge and increases capacity to handle unfamiliar situations. An aversion to uncertainty dampens the thrill of experimentation and stems the development of new ideas. Life is best approached in a spirit of exploration and enterprise. Without taking some level of risk, our society would stultify and cease to advance. We need sensible education and scientific information to allow people to strike their own appropriate balance between risk and safety, and between achievement and opportunity. That is where science can help all, future scientists and non-scientists alike.
	To close, I bring to the attention of your Lordships an initiative by the RSA, which has established a Risk Commission. We will meet for the first time later this month. The objective of the commission is to examine past scares and future areas of potential risk by taking evidence from a diverse range of experts. From this work, a set of guidelines aimed at enabling society to adopt a more rational approach to risk will be developed. We will look specifically at risks in medicine and health, alongside risk in other areas of life such as business, engineering, childhood, transport and security. Over time, we will produce a report on each of those areas. As it progresses, I hope that we might relate some of our findings to your Lordships' House. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, is a member of the commission. As the demands of society and the attempts to manage risk have become very prominent in recent years, perhaps we might on a future occasion wish to debate the issue of risk here in your Lordships' House.

Baroness Warnock: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, for raising this important question and drawing to your Lordships' attention the issues that I think will be increasingly crucial. I speak as someone interested in education, not as a scientist. Therefore, I shall be brief. Thinking of education in secondary schools, particularly as it is now, everyone would agree that there is an increasing need for improving the scientific understanding of pupils in school, especially of those who are of high intelligence and high ambition and are likely to be future leaders, including academic leaders and leaders in the media, but who do not intend to be professional scientists.
	New methods of teaching and learning—of which the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, spoke with such knowledge and imagination—must go hand in hand with new educational content. Many of the people to whom I have already referred in the category of highly intelligent and potentially influential people—and everyone at school—need a broad familiarity with the development and the history of science and the basic concepts on which the sciences are founded and were founded in the past. I emphasise the continuity and development of science, because it is easy to teach science in a fashion that makes people think, "This is what the facts are, and I can prove them by experimenting in a laboratory; no one has ever thought anything different, and no one ever will think anything different in the future".
	An understanding of the basic concepts has perhaps been most nearly achieved in the biological sciences, but such knowledge and understanding are badly lacking in physics, chemistry and engineering. I know that there is a new set of syllabuses for GCSE and A-level—I shall come back to those in a moment—but an entirely new sort of syllabus based far less on teaching in the laboratory and far more on distance and interactive learning should be devised. That would be the kind of flexible classroom that was envisaged by the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield. The notion of a flexible classroom is of enormous importance for the kind of subject matter with which I am concerned.
	As I have said, some attempts to open up scientific subjects to more pupils than those who are likely to be specialists are already being made, but, as far as I understand it—I have looked into the syllabuses to a certain extent—the usual methods of making science more accessible tend to move straight into ethical questions, because it is supposed that that is likely to make them more user-friendly. Far too much of bio-ethics, for instance, is based on an insecure conceptual foundation. The issues raised by the noble Baroness's Question are therefore of the greatest importance. The new, flexible classroom as she conceives it should be able to open up to the non-scientific world the imaginative possibilities of the scientific world. It would be for people who do not want to spend their time on the minutiae or who do not want to spend half their university career in the laboratory. I was never more sympathetic with any group of people in my time in Cambridge than with the engineering students, who really had no time at all for a social life because the burden of their experimental work was so intense.
	There are numbers of people, including me, who never could be a scientist because they are far too impatient and far too easily bored—that is why I felt so sorry for the engineers in Cambridge. However, I believe that a large number of people could be introduced to the concepts of science and learn to be critical through the internet and the interchange and organisation of information. Large numbers of people could be helped to gain an understanding, which would make a great difference to our society in the sense that it would make dialogue between scientists and the lay far more possible. It would perhaps begin to remove to a certain extent that lack of trust in scientists which so often characterises people's declarations of belief about scientific results and the kind of articles that one all too often sees in the media which inevitably show the scientist as someone who is alien and cannot be trusted not to have the most horrible designs on our society. For all those reasons, the kind of flexibility that the noble Baroness advocated is of great importance, but it should immediately reflect in the content of what is taught in secondary schools to people who are non-scientists.

Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, on securing this debate. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, I cannot claim to have any scientific background, and I, too, come to this debate from the point of view of education. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness for something that she is unaware that she gave to me. I remember listening to a lecture that she gave to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust way back in 1998–99. It was her speech on that occasion that started my interest in the science of the brain and how it might impact on the development of education policy. The noble Baroness probably doubled or trebled my knowledge of how the brain works in that one speech, such was my lack of knowledge beforehand. It has intrigued and interested me ever since, and I want to address my remarks to it in the next few minutes.
	In that speech, the noble Baroness used a figure which I have since misused on many occasions, and I had hoped that she would reuse it today so that I could get it firmly in my mind. She did not, so I will have to misuse it again. It is something like this: 80 per cent of what we know about how the brain works we have learned in the past 20 years. When I heard that five years ago, I drew the obvious conclusion that, if that was the case, the way we teach our children, and approach teaching and learning, should have seen a revolutionary change in those 20 years, as we absorbed new information about the science of the brain. The truth is that nothing could be further from what has happened.
	I came across a good little book the other day, Less is More, by Human Scale Education. I mention it because it produces two documents: one a description of the national curriculum in 1904, the other a description of the national curriculum in 1989, which is still with us. Reading that book, we see that the subjects we teach, what we call them, how we arrange them in the school day and even the amount of time we allocate to each discipline area has barely changed in almost a century. That is the great problem with teaching, learning and schools.
	There is a sort of underlying fault in our education system, which has got a lot better in the past 10 years, but which still ought to concern us. If we are, as a school system, to be able to use the rapid advances in science and technological research, we have got to have schools and teachers, and school leaders, who understand the research and allow it to implement their practice. Until the past 10 years, we have not even looked upon schools and teachers as places and people that should, day by day, look at the latest research, evaluate and adapt their performance in the light of that, measure its impact, and adapt and refine again. The notion of teachers as researchers has had life breathed into it over the past decade, but we need to see even more of it. We need our 240,000 teachers to be aware of recent brain research and how it can affect teaching and learning, in the same way that we assume that our surgeons and doctors are up to date with the latest technology and research in their field. That has got a lot better, but a lot more needs to be done in making our schools places of research, and making our teachers researchers.
	A number of things could be done to make this happen. First, traditionally, there has been too big a gap between those institutions who say they practice education research, and schools which actually deliver education. Although they are coming together, they need to be closer. There needs to be a much closer relationship between the fields of scientific, technological, health and education research. Whereas we are better at looking at education research to inform us about what happens in our schools, I am not aware of the organisations that can bring research from the other disciplines to bear and help us in that.
	The Department for Education and Skills clearly has a leadership role in this, and I pay tribute to the work it has done. It now has a strong analytical research department, and I think it tries to work on what the evidence shows it should do. I look over the past decade at the literacy strategy, the numeracy strategy, thinking skills and the key stage 3 strategy, which are all evidence-based in a way which I did not think happened before. My message would be that when we are looking at research, we must stay true to the evidence we find.
	In my time at the DfES, we launched upon thinking skills, which is a good area for teaching. Research tells us that we ought to do more with our young children. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that it did not get the warmest of receptions in the Daily Mail and like-minded papers. The message there is to keep the faith for evidence-based research and practice. That is the wider background which underpins this.
	What this debate also tells us is that the big ideas, the big wins, the brave new future of what happens in our schools, is around this area—it is how we use what we know about how the brain works to impact on teaching and learning.
	If I may also say as gently as I can to the Minister, because this will be subject to future debates between him and me, that that is the root of my disbelief—that changes in governance and structure are the big idea for the future. It is the solidity of the evidence about what we are learning about how the brain works that convinces me that learning more and doing more about teaching and learning is the big idea and the revolution for the future.
	When we go along that path it will tell us three things—I am guessing here. First, that we need to use time, space and skills in a totally different way in our schools. Schools need to look different, they need to use time differently and they need to use space in a different way. They need to smell different and feel different. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that for some children what is wrong with education is the schools. We have still got a system whereby the structure in which we educate children just does not work for some of them. In the years to come, as we use this evidence we will find that the way our schools and teachers use time, space and skills will change.
	Secondly, I would like to make mention of a primary school I visited in Birmingham just before I stood down as a Member of Parliament. The research that they were linking into was teaching every one of their children as an individual and trying to develop for them a timetable which enabled each child to learn at the time of the day which suited them best in different subject areas and different disciplines. They even went further and had a classroom that had so many different seating arrangements that the teacher was able, with any one child, to place them in a space with a style of teaching and a time that would suit them best. That is what personalised learning should be. Personalised learning is a great idea and one of the things that we have to develop even more. What personalised learning should be at its best is not enabling individuals to access the present curriculum and the present style of learning more effectively, but to enable us to use what we know about learning to wrap around each individual child and his or her needs so that they can achieve their potential.
	The third thing that this will tell us is that we have to learn to value those skills and styles of learning that we cannot measure. I understand the problems here and it has taken me a long time to get my mind around this, but the more I learn about how the brain works, the more and better I understand the place of creativity—not just in developing a set of creative skills and knowledge, but the impact that learning about creativity and through creativity can have on children's ability to learn every other skill and every other discipline.
	The future is exciting. It can be challenging. What I am conscious of is that there is no previous generation of educators who have had as much knowledge at their fingertips as to how the brain works as we have. It therefore falls to us to reshape our education system around the needs of children and, using that knowledge, to make sure that we can teach in a way that will enable every child to reach his or her potential. It is exciting and daunting, but it is a task that must be done.
	My last sentence is this. When we have worked it out, there is only one thing that we can be sure of, and it is that by then, the scientists will have found out something more about how the brain works and we will have to start again; the real message is that the way we organise our children's teaching and learning has, by the necessity of the job in which we operate, the need to be flexible.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Greenfield for introducing this fascinating subject. Her commitment to this field is great. Her knowledge is profound and her vision is extraordinary. I was interested in the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who had a distinguished career as Minister for Education in the other House, and in her mention of the power of the brain. The noble Baroness may be interested to read the acclaimed book of my noble friend, The Private Life of the Brain, which is an inspiring and thought-provoking read.
	Many of your Lordships may identify with a situation that unfolded in my household this past weekend. I bought a new piece of equipment to record some television programmes—mostly sport. While I was trying to understand the instruction booklet, my nine year-old son worked it out in a jiffy, without even reading the booklet. The harsh reality, I fear, is that most young people are able to understand and adapt to new technology more easily and effectively than those of us who are not so young. I say that as one of the younger Members of your Lordships' House, comparatively speaking. Our responsibility is to catch up and to ensure that developing education policy in this country properly reflects fast moving advances in science and technology. As an old dog needing to learn some new tricks, it is not easy. But the plain fact is that what was good for us is certainly not going to be good for the current young generation.
	The most recent research from the Office of Science and Technology indicated that while 86 per cent of the population believe that science makes a good contribution to society and that technology improves their lives, only 17 per cent of that study believed that consultation on science and technology issues with government had an impact on policy. The conclusion of the study was quite clear that many would like more of a say on certain issues pertaining to science and technology but feel that the Government are unlikely to listen to them.
	Technology is changing the way that teachers teach and students learn, and education strategy and priorities must reflect this reality. The blackboard has been replaced by the whiteboard; and where once research was sourced from a library, now it is found "Googling" on the internet. Change is broad and ongoing. It is important that we recognise what technology can do. But equally—I believe the point was made very strongly by my noble friend Lady Greenfield—it is important for us to recognise what technology cannot do.
	Of course, technological advances enhance both access to information and the process of learning. However, technology cannot teach on its own. In some quarters, technology is regarded as the panacea for budget cuts. I read with concern proposals in America where hundreds of students would sit in front of monitors being subjected to prerecorded electronic talking heads providing cheap, mass education. Such visions are nightmarish. Our challenge is to ensure that technology enhances the educational process and diminishes nothing.
	There is perhaps a parallel to be drawn with cricket. Many of your Lordships will be aware that in major cricket matches these days a third umpire is often called upon to study a video television replay of a possible run-out and convey an informed decision on whether a batsman made his ground to the umpire standing on the field. In this instance, technology ensures the accuracy of the decision-making process and assists the umpire. However, the cricket authorities forbid the use of the third umpire and video technology in LBW—leg before wicket—decisions because, in this instance, they believe that an umpire on the field remains in a uniquely qualified position to make the decision.
	In the classroom, as on the cricket field, technology should enhance the process rather than replace it. That has been the case in a pilot scheme called Learning To Go recently conducted in Wolverhampton. Under the scheme 130 ten and eleven year-old pupils across 18 schools in the city were each provided with a handheld PDA device, costing £300 per unit. These units incorporated built-in still and video cameras, a sound recorder and a wireless broadband connection, and were able to operate most software applications. The children used their devices to read e-books on screen, animate science principles, such as plant growth or water evaporation, and play maths games. They even played games on the PDAs.
	The issue of whether playing computer games makes a worthwhile contribution to the educational process has been a bone of contention in my house for some time. I have four children under the age of 10 and while all four of my children have enthusiastically voted "Yes", my wife and I have been somewhat less convinced by computer games. Obviously, some software programmes are more constructive than others and there is no doubt that such computer games can become addictive and make children seem even more uncommunicative than usual. However, I have come round to the view that they enhance education. That view is supported by the Department for Education and Skills' report on the educational use of games, which challenges the stereotype view of computer games being a distraction. The challenge is to harness rather than fight the medium.
	Information and communication technology is dramatically enhancing education in the United Kingdom, but its potential effect on education in the developing world—I have a particularly interest in Africa—is vast. ICT can help developing countries tackle a wide range of health, social and economic problems. By improving access to information and by enabling communication, ICT can play a major role in reaching the millennium development goals such as the elimination of poverty, combating serious disease and achieving universal primary education and gender equality. Unfortunately, in most developing countries, instruction in science and technology is either non-existent or very basic and such factors should perhaps be borne in mind when the Government contemplate how they spends funds to support educational projects in the developing world.
	We are not living in the midst of a communications evolution. This is a revolution. Today's latest mobile telephone is considered almost obsolete within a couple of months, and it is becoming clear that we are moving into a world where the PDA will stand right at the centre of daily life, being education. The accelerating convergence of information technology, nano-technology, biotechnology and cognitive science will have a huge impact on our lives. It will raise many moral and other issues. This is an issue that exercises the minds of professionals in the field and politicians, but it also has a huge impact on a broad cross-section of the public. I believe that we would do well to note the results of the research to which I alluded earlier, specifically that in determining policy in this area we should ensure that full and effective public consultation takes place.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, when I read that my noble friend Lady Greenfield was to introduce this debate and saw the list of noble Lords who had put their names down to speak, I concluded that this was an occasion on which I should listen and not speak and I am persuaded that I was right in the first instance. However, on Tuesday, I attended a reception on the use of new technology and I came to the conclusion that I had learnt something from it that encouraged me to offer a thought or two. I particularly pick up the point made by my noble friend that we have to relate education to the culture and circumstances of today's children. I learnt of an initiative led by a headmaster in Wolverhampton. Under his leadership, 18 schools came together to use PDAs. Many of the children came from areas of social deprivation, so PDAs were rented out to their families on condition that they were used for learning. They drew on software that was entertaining as well as instructive and that would engage the interest of those children. Thinking of those kids, so many of whom disengage themselves from education at an early age, because they see it as boring and not relevant, I reflected that if we could engage with their culture—the games machines, Nintendo, PlayStation, Sony, the iPod, which was on every one of my grandchildren's wish lists at Christmas—and if we could realise the opportunities for learning that come by engaging in the living culture of those children with their world and in their language, we might be much more successful with a lot of young people who today are almost born to failure in the terrestrial sense in education.
	I made some inquiries, and I learnt that there was a technology group in the Minister's department that is committed to developing with companies software that will make the use of these child-friendly devices effective for learning. It seemed to me that that is exactly what we should be doing—moving with them into their world into what is "in" with these young children, and is therefore acceptable and good, rather than saying "this is the way to learn". We need both. The Government, in their recent White Paper, which will come before us again—I shall listen with interest to the debates—are giving partnerships an increasing role in schools. With this technology, used interactively, it is possible to get away from the idea of "one teacher, one classroom", and engage interactively between teacher and several classrooms. The technology is there and is being used.
	I thought, "Come on, there really is something here which will be relevant to policy and learning". I then recalled that one of Harold Wilson's great contributions to us was the creation of the Open University. This Government created the University for Industry and learndirect which now offers learning to 500,000 people who have, in the main, not succeeded in their earlier education. I speculated whether there was room for an "open school" to assist teachers. I was not thinking of a big institution, but of a capability, much like the University for Industry is a capability for, rather than a writer of, programmes for learning—to commission and promote them and, especially, harness the enthusiasm of groups of schools in a town, so that it is owned by them rather than being remote and imposed. That is the case in Wolverhampton. I am always chuntering on about the dangers of leaping into new things without piloting them. Here we have, growing up around us, initiatives to use the new technology in this way. There may come a moment when it right to give momentum to this kind of learning through an open school that will particularly be relevant to the extended school day, as well as to learning at home and supporting the teacher in the classroom.
	If we are to help young children who come from disadvantaged homes, we must see that they have a standard instrument at home that they cannot otherwise afford. Therefore, I was sorry to learn that in this year's Budget, which really was the Budget of a decade for schools in terms of commitment of resource, that the Chancellor decided to withdraw the home computing initiative under which people who are not particularly highly paid can, through their employer, sacrifice a bit of their earnings every week to buy a computer on more advantageous terms than the individual. It also exempted that part of his or her income from income tax and national insurance contributions, but that has been withdrawn. That was a pity, as it helped these families to get into learning and helped parents to learn with their children. I wonder whether the Government have any other initiative in mind to replace the one that has been withdrawn.
	Finally, the kind of education that I had involved learning much by rote. There is a lot of good in learning one's tables and various other things in that way. But I left my physics classes full of definitions of wonderful things but with no understanding at all. I dare say that I can say "Archimedes' principle" faster than any other old man in London with absolutely no knowledge of what it means. If, in the new world with the open school, I can have a Dearing-friendly and lads and lasses-friendly way into learning, in which I can see old Archimedes in cartoon form teaching me his principle, I shall sign on.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, and I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, for introducing it. I very much enjoyed her opening speech. In fact, I think I understood most of it, too. My only commitment to cognitive-enhancing drugs is a daily dose of brain-enhancing fish oils.
	I particularly agree with the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, that children today learn in a way that is very different from the way in which we learned. My three year-old grandson seems to learn everything either by bouncing up and down or by standing on his head. He is learning a great deal, all the same, although I certainly would not want to copy him. I also share the enthusiasm of the noble Lords, Lord St John of Bletso and Lord Dearing, for PDAs. I am aware that there has been a very successful pilot scheme, which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, would certainly approve of, to provide PDAs to your Lordships. That will perhaps allow us to learn a little more about how children today learn effectively.
	In debating how children learn, it might be worth bearing in mind a sentence from the introduction to a book by a Member of your Lordships' House, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who is not here today. The book is entitled Learning Works: Widening Participation in Further Education, in which she said:
	"In a system so caught up with what is measurable, we can forget that learning is also about problem-solving, learning to learn, acquiring the capability for intelligent choice in exercising personal responsibility. It is a weapon against poverty. It is a route to participation and active citizenship".
	I know that the Government understand this. They have done two things that chime very well with those sentiments. The first is their investment in early-years education—trying to eliminate poverty and inequality, identify problems and intervene at an early stage for children. The other is the introduction of citizenship as part of the core curriculum. However, there are other areas where I believe the Government have so far failed our children.
	I believe that the role of education is not to stuff young heads with facts, such as the date of the Battle of Hastings. It is to teach children how to think critically, to take responsibility as a citizen of all the worlds they live in—the local world and the global world, to make wise choices and to develop morally, emotionally, creatively and physically as well as intellectually. That is why it is so important to understand how children think and to help them to learn, which is a term I prefer to the word "teach", by the way, in a way that harmonises with the world in which they live and the ways in which they are used to taking in information—in other words, through electronic media—and in ways which they see as relevant to their needs and which they enjoy.
	I learnt when I was training as a teacher, and through my experience in the classroom, that children learn by seeing and doing rather than by listening and reading, which is why I am so keen on practical science lessons and field studies out in the real world. That gives science students the "wow" factor. It develops their curiosity, even if there are risks attached. On that I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stone of Blackheath.
	The comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, on the way in which children use technology, are particularly relevant to the present day. I see technology as a tool for learning and not as a subject in itself except for those who wish to make it their career. I am afraid that it was far too often seen in schools as an add-on instead of as an integral part of other curriculum subjects and a tool for learning them, which is why I welcome the work of the Futurelab.
	In considering this Unstarred Question I decided that the noble Baroness wanted to know how aware the Government were of research in education and what account they took of the findings. The Government are blessed with having a country that is stuffed full of universities staffed by highly able academics who are only too interested in providing high-quality research on matters relating to education and its organisation, management, statistics, subject matter, methodology, monitoring and assessment, economics, relevance, uptake, demographics—and I could go on, but I think that noble Lords get the picture.
	The Government have commissioned many pieces of valuable research, ostensibly with the objective of informing policy. I therefore decided to look at the Government's track record on responding positively to the findings of that credible research. What I found was a record too often of buying a dog and barking yourself—of either failing to implement the measures that the researchers proposed or implementing them only in part in a way which undermines the greater benefits that might ensue.
	I refer in particular to the evidence on school admissions and selectivity; on child stress and teaching to the test; evidence gathered by Mike Tomlinson on the need to reform the 14-to-19 curriculum and assessment system; evidence on the negative effects of league tables; ASBOs; and the warnings from the most highly qualified professionals about the dangers of being too prescriptive from Whitehall about synthetic phonics and how professional teachers should teach literacy. Those are only a few of the examples that I could come up with. The effect on the morale of the teaching and lecturing workforce and this determined ignoring of the evidence in favour of the crude "what works" prejudices of the Prime Minister is a reservoir of pent-up fury and frustration, some of which was demonstrated by the debates at this Easter's teaching union conferences.
	Let us look at just one of these pieces of research which has suffered from death by tabloid headline. The Tomlinson report on education for 14 to 19 year-olds was published in October last year to general acclaim. It proposed reforms of far-reaching significance that are very much needed. Yet, when the Secretary of State announced what she was going to do about it, she had clearly succumbed to screaming tabloid headlines about ditching the precious A-levels—the so-called gold standard. In fact, Mike Tomlinson proposed no such thing; rather, he suggested a gradual incorporation of the best aspects of A-levels into something more fit for purpose in our modern society. We certainly need to do something. We need a revolution of the kind referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in her very inspirational speech.
	I am afraid that the reason for our poor participation in post-16 education is the poor school experience of many of our children. Many of the 47 per cent who fail to get their five A-C grade GCSEs are bored by the current 14-plus curriculum and demotivated from learning. GCSEs and A-levels are geared to the academic route. We have failed consistently to offer a coherent vocational route of equal standing and value. Then we wonder why we have a skills gap. What we need is a qualification system of national and international standing that attracts and serves the needs of the whole ability range.
	So what did Tomlinson propose and how did it link up with both the objectives I have just mentioned and how children think and learn? He realised that children and all of us are motivated by achieving something. When we do so we are motivated to do more—it cheers us up and boosts our confidence. But in this country we are fixated on failing people. We used to fail 80 per cent of children through the 11-plus, and now 47 per cent of children fail to get the required GCSE standards. Many children even fail to get into the school of their choice. Embracing failure seems integral to the national character. I hope that the Government will hear the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, and wake up to the fact that they cannot know everything themselves and listen to the research that they have commissioned.
	Of course the Government must respond to public opinion, but they must also lead public opinion. When they do so they should rely on good-quality research evidence about what works. Evidence-based policy is what we were promised by the Government, but over and over again we see that that is not what we get. From these Benches we have always commissioned research and gone into great detail about the cost and effectiveness of various policy options as well as the general principles of whether they will deliver a freer, more just and more equitable society. Perhaps the Government should keep the faith, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, urged, and listen to their DfES research department and do the same.

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I too want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, for introducing this timely and important debate, and to say how fascinating it has been thus far. The pace of technological and scientific advances is indeed dramatic and exciting and the impact on our daily lives dynamic, even intrinsic. Therefore, we need as a matter of urgency to educate and inspire those who could influence and drive those developments on behalf of all of us and our children as a force for good.
	With regard to how young people think, this generation are probably less influenced than ever before by what their parents and those adults close to them do and think. Moreover, advances in technology provide the real potential to broaden their horizons and to explore different options at various stages of their education. That said, this generation are probably more influenced than ever by the focus on celebrity, instant success, the transient and short term. In-depth skills are not the focus for many of them; however, money is. They like the technology—indeed, my teenage children and their friends would probably collapse without it—but there is a vacuum in terms of their understanding of how science and technology in schools can lead to an exciting career in industries where we excel, such as pharmaceuticals and high-tech systems engineering. That is the focus of my response to this Question.
	Unfortunately, in schools now the focus is on passing exams and, in the words of James Dyson, being "groomed for university". Dyson goes on to say that,
	"we are encouraged to become middle-classed professionals and to avoid industry and manufacturing. Furthermore, the arts and science divide damages this country's prosperity. In contrast, in France and Germany, engineering is held in high esteem and most pupils continue with some science instruction right through school. They are countries with a good vocational teaching tradition".
	In June 2004 the Royal Society warned that science lessons in schools failed to prepare pupils for future careers and studies. Professor Mick Brown from the society says:
	"The pressure on teachers to deliver exam results is immense. Their professional skills and time must be better utilised to teach and assess science in a way that helps pupils succeed in science careers as informed members of society as well as in exams. This means encouraging analytical skills and using an exam as a tool to help pupils learn and become enthused rather than simply as a means to a qualification".
	James Dyson goes further, believing that pupils must be allowed to feel that it is okay to fail—that,
	"we are too obsessed with getting things right; that it is by experimenting and getting things wrong that we learn".
	I say amen to that.
	It does not help that, for example, only a third of teachers of physics to 14 to 18 year-olds are actually qualified to teach the subject. This situation is compounded by attempts to make GCSEs in the sciences easy, which of course in practice means making them unchallenging and uninspiring. A new science GCSE to be introduced in 2008 concentrates on topics such as genetically modified food and global warming rather than scientific theory. How can we seek out the great minds of the future unless we encourage and challenge our present school children? Instead the Government are determined to patronise young people and diminish excellence in the name of so-called accessibility. The fact is that GCSE science is being cut from 30 to 20 per cent of curriculum time.
	Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul's School, wrote recently that the new GCSE specifications look likely to be a lethal injection for science, not a stimulant. He went on to say:
	"A-levels will be destroyed by stealth, by a process of dumb down and broaden out, spreading the actual scientific content so thinly that one does not need a graduate to teach it".
	Professor Bernard Lamb of Imperial College, London, has echoed growing concerns that changes to GCSE and A-level syllabuses, which effectively demand less from pupils, are dumbing down education. Common sense as well as facts tells us that making subjects easier does not achieve anything. Since 1986, overall A-level entries have risen by 23.1 per cent, but the number of pupils taking A-level physics has declined by more than a third.
	Young people want to be challenged and stretched. This is now recognised among a number of schools both in the private and the maintained system which either have moved or are moving to the international GCSE course, which at least challenges pupils and encourages them to experiment and explore—those things that we took for granted when we in your Lordships' House were at school. I am sure that many of today's leading scientists will have had their interest and passion for their subject stimulated from a young age by live experiments. Children confined to textbooks are bound to be turned off. As the noble Lord, Lord Stone, has said, we must allow our children to take risks and discover for themselves. Indeed, I too am a member of the Risk Commission and I look forward to seeing the noble Lord next week.
	The outlook for science and technology in universities is equally worrying. Only last weekend a report published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted the importance of maintaining world-class research centres within and close to our universities, to attract international R&D investment and maintain our competitive edge in the pharmaceutical and chemicals sectors. But the recent closure of university chemistry departments, including those at Exeter, Queen Mary London and King's College London do not bode well for the future.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, is absolutely right: we must plan for the future now. Indeed, I spent some time over Easter reading a report called Towards 2020 Science, produced by the 2020 Science Group established by Microsoft Research Cambridge in association with over 30 distinguished scientists, who all contributed to the report. It concludes that a fundamental scientific revolution is under way, underpinned by advances in computing and computer science. Powerful new conceptual and technological tools in computer science now emerging are set to transform the way science is done, and will play a critical role in accelerating our ability to understand and tackle key global challenges for the 21st century, from climate change and the environment to revolutionising medicine and healthcare—and, of course, education. The report makes 10 recommendations, the second of which is,
	"urgently rethink how we educate tomorrow's scientists".
	It is accompanied by a chart which maps each critical stage of this development from 2005 to 2020. It makes very exciting reading, except that at each stage we read:
	"Education—how to produce 'new kinds' of scientists now urgently needed (computationally and mathematically highly literate)".
	In essence, standards in science and mathematics continue to fall in the UK, so our cutting-edge industries are relying more and more on better qualified foreign students. This is hugely frustrating given that we know we have the raw resources in our young people. There are a number of steps the Government could take to begin to tackle this crisis.
	First, the Government must begin by making a practical commitment to science by offering state schools guidance to facilitate the teaching of individual science subjects up to GCSE. Secondly, much more should be done to explain to young people how science and technology qualifications can lead to interesting and worthwhile careers across a broad and growing range of fields. Thirdly, a more positive attitude towards business is crucial. We need young people with science and technology qualifications to encourage and implement investment in new as well as small and medium scientific and technological enterprises.
	Fourthly, practical experience can transform attitudes, thinking and approach. My 17 year-old son has just spent several days on work experience with Lonza Biologics in Slough, watching and learning as a group of young scientists carried out research in an active laboratory. Leo says that this practical and inspiring experience has changed the way in which he will approach his studies and consider his options for the future. If only there was a way that all young people could be given that chance. In addition to the Government providing tax breaks to corporations for investment in research and development, has any consideration been given to introducing further incentives for the private sector to invest specifically in the provision of work experience and student sponsorship for post-GCSE students educated in the UK?
	Fifthly, we must tackle a continuing lack of discipline in our schools. Practical applications and experimentation are not feasible without discipline. A survey by Save British Science found that more than three-quarters of science classes in 67 secondary schools in England had to be cancelled. In 57 per cent of those cases, the reason given was bad behaviour.
	Sixthly and above all, the Government must listen to the scientists and stop thinking that "science made easy" equals science. There are no quick fixes, but the possibilities are tremendous. Optimism must play a part, together with a bold return to rigorous standards in schools. A genuine commitment now might just help to deliver the next generation of innovators.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the House is indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, for such an interesting debate on a subject to which she has made such a great professional and public contribution over the years. The debate has touched on many of the issues discussed in her book, Tomorrow's People, about the impact on our society of the astonishing pace of technological and scientific progress. We are glad that the House has had a chance to debate these issues this evening.
	The question raises fundamental issues about how and what young people learn—besides working DVRs, which I assume is the new piece of TV recording equipment which the noble Lord, Lord St John, has just acquired. I speak with some feeling as I have just acquired one, too, and it was my eight year-old who showed me how to use it. We are all in the same boat. In the short time available, I can barely touch on all the issues raised; it would be impossible to do so in 12 minutes. I will start with the "how" before moving on to the "what" when addressing this wide question of what account we are taking of the impact of fast-moving advances in science and technology in planning future education policy.
	The Government's policy is to harness new information and communications technology safely within education, so that teachers and learners are conversant with its appropriate use as an increasingly important life skill in its own right, and are able to deploy it in the course of a much more personalised approach to education, which develops the talents, aptitudes and interests of each individual young person much more than was the case in the past. A particular government policy objective is to prevent the growth of a digital divide between the haves and the have-nots. That is why we have made investment in deprived communities such a priority. I know this was a cause close to the heart of my noble friend Lady Morris when Secretary of State. I am glad that we have continued to work on it since, not least through the excellent work of the E-learning Foundation, which my noble friend chairs.
	I should add that it was my noble friend who, as Secretary of State, established NESTA Futurelab, which was rightly praised by the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield. Futurelab is looking, for example, at how software and related technologies can provide the narrative context for learning that the noble Baroness indicated was so important, when set alongside traditional learning through books and experience. Futurelab is also piloting the use of PDAs and games in education to identify what works and how it can be spread more widely.
	Our next key ICT objective for schools at large is our 2008 target for every school pupil to have a personalised online learning space with an e-portfolio. To set this commitment in context, since 1998 the Government have invested £3.5 billion to ensure all schools have essential, modern ICT infrastructure. In 1996, the ratio of computers to pupils was 1:19 in primary schools, and now is 1:7. In secondary schools, the ratio was 1:9 in 1996; now it is 1:4. Primary schools spent an average of just £15 per pupil in 1998; now that figure is £56 per pupil. Spending in secondary schools in 1998 was on average £46 per pupil; now it is £69 per pupil, with 99 per cent of schools connected to the internet—most at broadband speeds—compared to just 17 per cent of primary schools in 1998. Virtually all schools now have interactive whiteboards in many, if not most, classrooms. Even three years ago this was not the case.
	In addition to hardware, we are continuing to help schools improve in their use of ICT. Nearly all teachers have received ICT training and continue to develop their ICT skills. To gain qualified teacher status, ITT students must now pass an ICT skills test and demonstrate that they know how to use ICT effectively, both to teach their subject and to support their wider professional role. To support this, Becta, which is the department's lead partner agency for ICT in schools, is developing models of e-learning that will enable schools to understand which stage of ICT development they are at, what they need to do to move to the next level and what help is available to get there.
	All subjects are benefiting from this new technology. I have personally been impressed, if not amazed, on my school visits at what is now possible in the classroom—online Ordnance Survey maps transposed on to 19th-century maps of cities in geography, to study urban developments; computer-assisted composition programmes in music; video conferencing between classes in different countries in languages, along the lines indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing; and the application of games technology to every subject, including even electronic dance mats in one Spanish language programme I witnessed recently.
	Languages are also, I believe, a good example of where changes in technology are driving changes in assessment in education to reflect more personalised approaches to learning. A year ago we introduced a new languages ladder to enable students to be tested in all the principal languages when they have reached a standard irrespective of their age, as with music grades, for those learning musical instruments. I take this to be a significant advance in the way that we encourage language teaching and learning in our schools.
	We are also strongly encouraging the creation of new and dynamic multimedia content for education. January saw the launch of the BBC digital curriculum under the brand name BBC jam. Teachers' TV was launched in February 2005. This is a path-breaking initiative, indeed one kind of national open school of the kind described by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, available free on Freeview and via the web, to give teachers a ready insight into how their colleagues and others are bringing the curriculum into life and dealing with the manifold challenges of being a modern teacher. The Teachers' TV website has a library of over 1,000 programmes that can be accessed and downloaded for free. The site also features links to other relevant sites, lesson plans and background information, making it an invaluable resource for the entire school workforce.
	There is therefore now a wealth of new resources for teachers and students available to enhance subject teaching. We have also introduced a study of new technologies themselves into the curriculum. For example, over £2 million has been invested in training design and technology teachers to use industrial-standard design engineering software for our CAD/CAM in schools programme.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, and the noble Lord, Lord St John, rightly stressed that there are risks as well as opportunities in new technologies and ways of learning. My department and Becta commission a wide range of research about this, taking account of emerging research from other fields, such as the neurosciences. There is fairly consistent evidence that ICT can improve motivation to learn and increase the attention span of learners, particularly boys. But the key point from the research is that the way technology is used or moderated by the teacher is critical in the classroom. It is, for example, essential to guard against internet abuse, plagiarism and adverse medical impacts, and the department issues guidance in these areas.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, also raised concerns about the use of drugs such as Ritalin. Medicines should of course be used only where appropriate, and for the most common forms of behavioural problems, medication is inappropriate. However, for some disorders, including the more severe forms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, medicines are recognised as an appropriate form of treatment. Their use should be based on a full assessment by a specialist, usually a child psychiatrist, and form part of a comprehensive treatment programme. After a thorough and critical assessment of the most up-to-date research evidence in this area, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published guidance last month, which covers the use of methylphenidate, one version of which is Ritalin, atomexitine and dexamphetamine in the treatment of ADHD. This guidance replaces and updates the previous recommendations, published in 2000.
	I can say that we have no evidence to suggest a link between the use of IT and hyperactivity, although we will keep under review research in this area. On the contrary, as I said, there is consistent evidence that IT can aid concentration, motivation and attention spans, particularly among boys. However, in any school there may be individual pupils whose behaviour reflects serious social and emotional problems rather than simple disaffection. The special educational needs code of practice sets out a range of interventions for schools to support pupils who are hyperactive and lack concentration or have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties.
	I move on to the important area of science, which is the other half of the question. Science as a living and breathing subject at the cutting edge of modern knowledge will, as many speakers in this debate have stressed, come to life only if every school has good or inspirational science teachers and the facilities to teach science subjects well. That is why the central planks of our policy in this area have been infrastructure renewal and significant new investment in the recruitment and training of science teachers, including physicists.
	On both fronts we are making progress. The Building Schools for the Future programme is replacing or renewing the entire secondary school estate over a 15-year period. State-of-the-art science facilities are a part of that. Since 1997 there has been a 30 per cent increase in the number of new science teachers, but we know that there is still a good deal more to do in improving the science-teaching workforce.
	We are further improving the value of recruitment incentives to draw more good graduates into the profession. The teacher training bursary rose to £7,000 in September 2005 and will rise to £9,000 this September. The golden hello for new science teachers rose to £5,000 for trainees entering PGCE and equivalent courses in September last year, and we are recruiting and training a new cadre of specialist science higher level teaching assistants to enable every secondary school to recruit at least one by 2007–08, alongside the development of the new national and regional science learning centres set up as a long-term investment in science education as part of an important £51 million partnership with the Wellcome Trust.
	We have been encouraging science and mathematics students at university to consider teaching as a career while helping enthuse young people in the classroom through the Student Associate Scheme. Of the 20,000 students placed over the last three years, 3,000 have been science undergraduates. My right honourable friend the Chancellor's recent Budget made an extra £700,000 available in each of the next two years to create more science and mathematics placements on this excellent scheme. This was just one element of a new package for science in schools in the Budget. The Chancellor also made a commitment of £32 million-worth of new measures over the next two years to improve science teaching and learning.
	I should stress that one element of this package includes a significant boost to the availability of the three individual sciences at GCSE, including physics—to take the point rightly raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe—and particularly for students scoring highly in science at the key stage 3 tests at the age of 14. This follows from the evidence—because we are very evidence-based in this area, as in all others—that it is clear that those who do well at key stage 3 in science and then go on to study the individual sciences at GCSE are much more likely to proceed to study sciences at A-level—getting high grades—and then go on to do so at university. That is something we wish to encourage.
	It is equally important that we keep the curriculum up to date with the latest developments in science. To this end, a new programme of study for science at key stage 4 will be introduced this September. I should stress to the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, that it maintains the breadth and depth of the current curriculum, but for all the reasons given by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, it gives a much greater emphasis to the application of science in today's world in a very practical way. Young people will learn more about contemporary scientific and technological developments and their benefits, drawbacks and risks; for example, the implications of the use of genetics testing by employers and insurance companies, computer climate models and their evidence that human activities are causing global warming, the difficulty of developing an effective vaccine against the HIV virus and the concept of risk rightly raised by my noble friend Lord Stone. Through the Education and Inspections Bill we are proposing a new statutory entitlement to a programme of study leading to two GCSEs, which we expect at least 80 per cent of pupils to follow.
	I could have said so much more on these important subjects. In conclusion, I thank all noble Lords for participating in this very stimulating short debate. By expertly exploiting current technologies to educate and inspire young people, I believe that we can make a reality of personalised learning and develop individual talent to a wholly new degree. But the deployment of these technologies requires vigilance and care and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, so rightly said, we need to be alive equally to the challenges and the risks as well as to the opportunities.

House adjourned at fifteen minutes before five o'clock.
	Thursday, 20 April 2006.